


Collateral Damage || NEGAN

by MagicMillard



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-17 02:11:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9299495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicMillard/pseuds/MagicMillard
Summary: "Seeing as we've got some time to kill," Negan speaks up again, stepping forward into the small distance I previously put between us. "I think it would be enjoyable to screw your brains out, I mean, if you're agreeable to it." He turns side on and raises his eyebrows at me. He smiles, he doesn't grin, he genuinely smiles, which is every bit as worrying as a pyromaniac with a shit load of grenades.[Smut will make an appearance in this fic;-Chapter 4]





	1. || Subtlety never was my strong suit

When we arrived at Alexandria it looked like the perfect place you'd want to live with the population of the Earth being mainly corpses with the ability to get up and walk around. However, we knew better. Of course, the pre-existing members of the Safe Zone didn't know any different, nor did they know any _better._ A lot of people in our group had already made the same mistake too many times before with the CDC, the farm, the prison; they tricked themselves into believing they would be safe there. Nowhere is safe and as much as we've come to learn this the hard way, it always amazes me how many people honestly believe, in their ignorant hearts, that nothing is going to hurt them. Not walkers, not by psychopaths and not bad people who what to take what they have away from them.

It was fair enough for the people at Alexandria to be sceptical of our arrival, they were also justified in their fear of letting someone like Rick come into their home and throw his weight around. I'll happily admit that even I was scared when Rick rocked up at our little camp back in Atlanta, I know him well enough to know what he's like. I think most people are scared of him on some degree simply because of the strong first impression he makes on everyone he meets. That initial judgement and prejudice is what caused these people to have sour attitudes towards Rick when thing here started turning to shit. He was the first one to have the blame hung over his head by the vast majority.

People can blame him for what's happened here since we got here all they want, but all of it has occurred for reasons outside of our control. There's nothing we could have done to stop them from happening, nothing Rick could have done, nothing I could have done, nothing Daryl could have done, nothing anyone could have done. The attack from the Wolves still would have come, Negan and the Saviours still would have eventually found Alexandria. It may have been a week later or a year later if we had never showed up. It really doesn't matter because there was no way of stopping it. Negan is not a force that can be stopped.

Ever since the news came back that Rick had been shot on duty, being so closely related to him has been like having a series of ongoing headaches that come on in waves without being able to predict when they are going to start. Firstly, finding out he got shot was heartbreaking to say the least and it was only made worse by the world becoming infected with the virus that we now know would come to almost wipe out humanity. Since waking up from his coma and deciding he wanted to rule the world, being fortunate to be his sister has been more stressful that it should. People seem to have a hard time working out that I and Rick are not the same person. Just because we have the same parents does not mean that I have anything to do with the actions he makes. Rick does something people don't like and I'm always the one on the receiving end of it just as much as he is. I constantly get treated for calls that he's made.

That may sound like I'm not a fan of my big brother, but I can assure you that's not the case at all. I love him and I love Carl and Judith just as much. Judith is just the most adorable thing to bless this life and Carl, as much as he can be a freaking pain in the neck from time to time, he's the best nephew I could have asked for. I'm quite proud of my reputation for always being the 'cool' aunt that always let him break all kinds of rules when I babysit him when he was younger. One of my favourite things about him is that as he started to grow up, and even still to this day, he's never got bored of me. He's never been embarrassed by me hugging him and he's not ashamed to admit he loves me. It's probably got something to do with me being _a lot_ younger than Rick is, making us closer in age than he and his dad is. I do know for sure that whatever the reason is for it, I'm not going to argue with it.

**[[[]]]**

"Alex?" I hear Rick call through the house. I hear him, but I don't bother responding because I'm already on my way down to join him. I'll be stood next to him in a few seconds. I want a glass of water from the kitchen anyway. "Alexus?" His voice bounces around the walls louder this time as I'm about halfway down the stairs.

"Alright, alright, give me a damn second." I shout back as I race down the last 11 stairs and reach the bottom of the landing. I pull my tank top up a touch so he doesn't have any more reasons to call me a 'bad influence' again. I round the corner to my immediate right and turn into the kitchen. I lean against the work surface and he looks at disapprovingly like he's not impressed with the way I'm walking or something. Although, to be fair, he looks at everyone like this. It's starting to get to the point where I can't remember the last time I saw him smile. I put my hands behind myself and push upwards to push myself up and sit on the countertop.

"I'm going out to look for supplies for the Saviours tomorrow. I need you to keep an eye on Carl and look after Judith for me." He gets straight to the point, as he often does. He looks up at me with his very blue eyes that I've always been extremely jealous of. He got blessed with my dad's amazing blue eyes and I got lumbered with bog standard green ones – they come as a product of the perfect mixture of my dad's blue eyes and my mum's brown ones.

"Yeah, of course. No problem." I automatically agree. Even with Carl being beyond the age of needing me to physically watch him 24/7, Judith still needs someone to care for her. I love getting to look after her; she's a gem. "Where are you going for it?" I pick up and apple from the fruit bowl besides me and take a bite out of it.

"I found this place with a warning sign out the front of it. I figured if it's got a sign out the front of it to keep people away, it's got to be worth protecting. I'm taking Aaron with me and I'm going to be gone overnight." He gives me more information to go by. He outstretches his hand in my direction in a silent request for me to pass him an apple as well. "We're hoping to find a enough to keep Negan happy for a while." He rubs the skin of the red fruit against his shirt before he raises it to his mouth and sinks his teeth into it.

"How charming of you to ask me to babysit while you take someone else out scavenging with you. I've not been outside the perimeter fence for months. Tell me what I have to do to be allowed to leave here and I'll do it." I slide down off the countertop and land on the floor with a hollow thud.

"You know it's not safe for you to go anywhere. Negan doesn't know you exist yet and, right now, that's the safest position anyone can be in. He pays us visits here whenever he feels like it. There's no telling when he's going to turn up outside those gates. If he sees you coming back or leaving when he does the same with his men, it would be detrimental. That man knowing I have a sister would only give him more leverage to hurt me and this community. It's exactly the same reason he can't know about Judith." Rick shuts me down with the same comeback he gives me every time I attempt to bargain with him to let me leave Alexandria. It's not like I want to go out on a hunting trip that would see me gone for a week, I literally want nothing more than to get out for an hour or two. It's driving me halfway to insanity being cooped in this place like an animal trapped in its enclosure at the zoo.

"He's going to find out about me sooner or later, Rick. This whole thing with that prick taking all our supplies isn't something that's going to be over in a few weeks. This is going to span a number of months, maybe even _years._ " I pause for a second to finish eating up the flesh on my apple. I traipse over to the rubbish bin and throw the core into the trash. "You can't keep him from finding about me forever, I can't stay grounded for the rest of the time Negan controls everything we do. I'm not some kid you can tell how to behave." I walk back to the storage cupboards to take out a glass to fill up with water as I proceed to keep on talking. "In all honesty, I want to meet the guy. I've not even seen what he looks like yet. All this talk about him and I've not got a face to put the name to." I turn back around to face my brother.

"No...you really don't want to do that." Rick apparently knows exactly how I feel. Forget the whole 'you're the only one who knows how you really feel' – it turns out other people can tell you what you want to do as well. Amazing, isn't it? He does his thing where he looks at his shoes and shakes his head from side to side by a fraction of an inch. "He's a disturbing man, Al. Having to be within 5 feet of him is an unpleasant experience."

One thing I will never understand about Rick is his lifetime long inconsistency in the nickname he chooses to refer to me by. Sometimes he calls me Alex, sometimes he calls me Al. I'm rarely called Alexus, my full name, and thank god nobody calls me Lexi. I would hate it for people to call me that.

"I'm not arguing with you, but what makes someone a bad person in this day and age? 10 years ago killing someone would have made you a bad person, now it's becoming a daily chore. What does he do that sets him apart from everyone else that does something terrible? I mean, yeah, he takes our stuff away from us, but what does he do other than that that makes him so evil?" I challenge him. I'm purposely being a pain in the ass because, with a spot of pot luck, it should help me to get him to change his mind about making me stay here. "Does he kill children? Is that what makes someone a bad person in a world full of murderers and thieves?"

"Stop it. You're being ridiculous and you know it." Rick only eats half of his apple by the time he's had enough of it and throws it across the open space of the kitchen. It lands perfectly in the trash can.

"You always have been a show off. All the way back when were kids you were a show off. Like that year your high school baseball team won everything they competed for." I may be over 10 years younger than Rick, making him a full time family man by the time I was ready to leave high school myself, but he was still always the one that got away with everything. The age difference between us is so great that my graduation ceremony was eclipsed by Carl being born. The way I'm going on makes me sound bitter, yet it's not like that. We were always a close knit family, and we still are.

"And here we are, here as grown adults and you're still acting like a child." Rick looks at me, having been looking down at the floor beneath his feet; he raises his eyebrows in the same motion. He shifts his gun belt around on his hips and goes back to standing up bolt right the way he was before.

"Tell you what...I'm stop acting like a child when you stop grounding me like one that's been caught smoking a joint or something." I retaliate as he starts moving around the area where he's stood, readying himself to get going again. My comment follows a spell of him being grounded for actually not being allowed to leave the house for anything other than school for getting caught for smoking weed once. (But nobody talks about that seeing as he was a cop and all that.)

I crack a smile at him, even that isn't enough to get the stone hard set expression of heartache off his face. I don't think he understands how him being so down all the time affects the people around him who love him. It's exhausting always having to be the positive one when you're the only one trying. To a point, it always has been that way.

"Fine." He sighs letting his shoulder hunch back slightly. "Make sure nobody sees you leave and that you're back here within three hours so me and Aaron can get going on time, we can't leave without you being here to look after Judith." He finally gives in. My tough-as-nails brother steps forwards and opens his arms up. "Please don't get yourself in an danger." He clasps his arms around me.

"I'll be fine. You need to stop worrying about me so much." I hug him back. I end it a few seconds later by patting him lightly on the back.

We take a step back from each other. When I look at Rick, his facial expression makes it obvious that he's already regretting letting me go. He's probably more bothered that he gave into me so easily than anything. Now I've got my way this once, he knows I'm sure as hell going to push my luck every time I want something from this point onwards. You spend enough time wearing someone down and they will give in at some point. It's does matter how long it takes, it will happen, they will break.

"Why don't you take someone else with you? It would make me feel better." Rick asks me last minute as he crosses the room to the back door, which he stands in the open doorway of as he makes for me to reply to him. A breeze blows through the house. It's nice.

"The only person I'd ever consider taking with me is Daryl, but he's kind of being held as some kind of prisoner of war." I remark. Rick doesn't argue with him. He nods his head like he understands and slips away without muttering another word.

As quickly as that, I'm on my own again. Being alone doesn't bother me. It's deciding whether I hate it or love it that does.

**[[[]]]**

There are always two kinds of people in the world. The people that like something and the people who don't. The people who would jump in front of a bullet to save someone else and the people who wouldn't. No matter what the subject at hand, everyone can be sorted into one of two groups of people. When it comes to going somewhere unknown, there are, again, two different types of people depending on the type of weapon they choose to take with them. Some (most) people will take a knife and a gun in case it hits the fan. And the other people are the stealthy kind (like me, Michonne and Daryl) who swear by their trusty, silent weapons. Weapons like swords, crossbows and sport bats. I started off being one of the people who take a knife and a handgun. I've since jumped camps and got myself a more reliable means of defending and protecting myself. I once came very close to being eaten alive a handful of times when using a knife whilst in Daryl's company. He suggested I find another weapon: not a crossbow because he didn't want to spend his time teaching me how to use it and not a blade of any sorts because, and I quite directly, 'I'm the kind of person that would accidently do more damage to myself than anyone else'. After trying and failing with most of the weapons you can think of, I finally discovered that I'm lethal with a softball bat. Upon seeing me excel using an old wooden one, Daryl promised me and made it his personal mission to find me a nice aluminium one. True to his word, he did find me one. It took him about two months to get me one, but he did eventually come back with one, a real nice one as well. The kind that would have cost you a couple hundred dollars if you were to buy in new from a sporting goods store.

Obviously because time has practically been destroyed, I had to make a guess at how long and hour and a half was. I didn't want to piss Rick off by being late back to babysit Carl and Judith. Carl's old enough to look after himself, so it's more a case of looking after the little one. I'll keep an eye on Carl and keep him in check if he thinks about doing something stupid, which in reality he often does.

I didn't have much time to do anything too much. I walk around the wooded area for a while, climbed a tree and sat there as I enjoyed the rare luxury of a tin of peaches before starting to make my way back home again. Home is where the heart is after all.

I didn't find much on my small adventure, nothing more than an old gas station containing a tiny blessing of three untouched packets of cigarettes and a jar of smooth peanut butter (the best kind of peanut butter). I'm keeping it all for myself and I'm not sharing it with anyone. I don't give a rat's ass if Negan wants 'half our shit', if nobody finds out about my loot, nobody can try making me hand it over. I'll offer the man a cigarette, but he's sure not getting any more than that from me.

It's my shit, not his.

All I need to do now is find a lighter or a box of matches. Although I feel like finding a lighter _and_ the cigarettes in the same week would be like asking for a miracle so I'll have to hope there's some hidden in the back of a cupboard somewhere back at Alexandria.

**[[[]]]**

I make it back while Rick is still there. I keep my stuff in my backpack until I'm safely past anyone who might ask me questions. Once I get back to Rick's house, I throw all my bag down onto the sofa along with my bat and let myself fall down into it.

As soon as my ass hits the cushion of the seat, I realise doing what I just did was a really stupid move. Whatever blood, mud, dirty and crap that was on the metallic surface of the sporting equipment-come-lethal weapon is now all over the fabric. Old habits die hard and remembering that we live somewhere nice that I should respect isn't something I've grown used to yet. Getting a stain like blood out of fabric is a struggle with the limited cleaning supplies we have.

I huff as I get up. I pick the weapon up and carry it with me to the back door. I sling it outside where it lands on the grass and can't get anything else dirty. I'll clean it up later on, when I've finished cleaning up this godforsaken cushion cover that's quite frankly not worth the effort. I trundle my way back through the house and make a start on clearing up my mess by unzipping the cover from the back and pulling the foam centre out of it.

I walk through to the kitchen and throw the cover into the sink. I run the water and start trying to lift the stain out of it using my hands and a sponge. I hope that acting quickly will stop any of the stains from setting in too deeply. I leave it soaking in the water for a while as I go upstairs and take over looking after Judith for him.

I thud up the stairs, without much care about how much noise I'm making. It's not like there are any neighbours I need to worry about. I reach the very top and follow the way to Judith's room. I push the door fully open and walk into the centre of the room, standing in front of Rick, who's sitting on the open window ledge with his daughter sitting in his lap. He bounces her softly up and down on his knee.

"You don't look like you want to go." I state the obvious as his eyes drift up to meet mine in acknowledgement of me arriving. I step forward to take Judith away from me, so he can be on his way and get this done. I make sure I've properly got a hold of her and shift her up for I'm holding her tight in my arms against my body.

"It's that obvious, huh?" Rick glumly asks, rising to his feet.

"Well, come on..." I say dragging him by his shirt sleeve out of the rom and out onto the second floor landing. I continue back down the stairs, with Rick following shortly behind me. "The sooner you get going, the sooner you'll be back." I stand aside as he walks past me. I'm sure he doesn't realise it, but it's something that he said to be ages ago and it's stuck with me all this time. While it's not always strictly true, the concept does help to make things easier.

He clicks the latch open on the front door and pulls the wooden structure open on its hinges. A burst of fresh air runs through the open door, it makes me think about how we really should have more windows open in here to let the air circulate thought.

Rick steps outside onto the porch and turns back to me before he marches off. "Carl and Michonne are both around if you need them. You'll be on your own for a while." He shifts his weight from one leg over to the other. "Michonne is out gathering supplies and Carl is around somewhere with Enid last time I saw him. I saw him trying to sneak out without anyone seeing him so he could follow her." Rick almost smiles at that last part, _almost_.

"And you're not mad at him for it?" I try to sound calm. Carl's his son and even I'm worried about him being out there on his own. I understand he's a teenager now and that one day he's going to become an adult, but the boy isn't even eighteen yet. In my mind he's still too young to be running around like that.

"I thought I would be, but I'm not. He's a smart young man. He won't go far." Rick sounds more confident that he really should be. He tends to forget that Carl killed a person before the time he turned 15 years old. While he seems like he's fine on the outside, that's the kind of thing that messes someone up by bubbling away under the surface. He also has this habit of bottling everything up and keeping it to himself; nobody really knows what he's capable of when put to the test.

"As long as you're cool with it." I smile at him so he remembers what one looks like. "Just stay safe out there, I want you back with all your limbs intact and no bite marks!" I add the last past as he makes his way down the steps and off down the street.

He salutes me as he walks away and turns it into a wave as he is about to disappear out of sight around the corner. Once he's gone and I can no longer see him, I shut the door back up and turn around on my heels. I take Judith through to the kitchen with me, where I need to finish cleaning up the marks I made on the cushion cover. Before I think about doing that, mind you, I have to find somewhere safe to put Judith while I clean up?

Considering she can stand up, just about, on her own, sitting her on the counter next to the sink isn't a good idea because she would probably find a way to fall off and hurt herself. I used to babysit for people to earn myself some extra cash, I know what young children are capable of. It's a damn lot more than you think.

To keep Judith safe I drag a feeding chair into the kitchen with my free arm and position it next to where I'm going to be standing. I put her into and check the fastening are done up properly to ensure she's not going to find a way out of it.

I go back to my attempts to getting blood stains out of lightly coloured material without much success. It's a tougher job than I thought it would be, I forgot to factor in the absence of any soap or stain removal. Needless to say it doesn't take long for me to give up. I figured it would be a lot easier (and dishonest, I know) to simply put the cover back on and flip the damn thing over so the stains are face-down instead of face-up.

Needing to hang the damp cover outside on the washing line to dry, I pick Judith back up again and carry her in one arm with the cover across the other. I take Judith outside with me once I've successfully got the door open using my foot - a task which turned out to be a harder task than I realise as well. When finally outside, in the backyard, I set Judith down on the grass so she can crawl around for a while. I always maintain that she should spend more time outside, especially with the weather being so kind to us at the moment.

I set about my task of pegging up the cushion cover to dry out before I try putting it back on. I keep my eye on the little one the entire time to make sure I don't end up losing her or something terrible like that. That's usually the kind of unlucky think that happens to me. I need to make sure she doesn't put anything in her mouth either, she's too precious to go eating a snail or something gross like that.

Seizing the opportunity of being outside, I pick my bat up while I'm out here so I can take it back inside with me and clean it up when I sit down with nothing else better to do. I'm easily entertained to say the least. Sitting on the sofa and giving my bat a good clean will keep me occupied for a good while.

Once I'm back inside I put my little niece on the floor in front of me. I push the coffee table well out of the way so she has enough time to clamber around all she wants. Kids need all the space around them they can get, they like recreating the great escape and making you go look for them. Carl used to do it all the time, he was constantly rolling underthings and crawling distances you didn't know he was capable of at such a young age. It's remarkable really. I pull the rag out of the back pocket of my jeans before I sit down and make a start on running the cloth over the metallic surface of the weapon to get off the black(ish) sticky blood that's starting to congeal. It comes off easy enough and I keep cleaning it until it's spotless. If you're going to do a job, there's no point in half-assing it. You might as well do it properly the first time.

**[[[]]]**

Yesterday ended up being a much lonelier day than I had expected it to be. I knew I was going to be virtually on my own until Carl came back, or Michonne, but they both got back so late it was already dark by the time them made it through the front door. Carl returned a tiny bit before Michonne did. Carl came in, sat down next to me and started up conversation without offering any explanation as to where he's been all this time. Nothing, not a word.

Carl only wants to talk when he's in a good mood, so his willingness to talk to me gives it away that he's not been up to anything he shouldn't have been. If he had been up to something he would have either not said a single word to me or he would have simply gone straight upstairs to his bedroom and would have stayed in there until morning.

He sits and talks to me for about a quarter of an hour without starting to run out of things to talk about and without me needing to start leading the conversation.

"Do you want something to eat? Or have you already eaten?" I make sure that I fulfil all the duties that come with being someone's favourite aunt. I may be the only aunt they have, but that's besides the point. I'd still be the favourite no matter how many other siblings either of his parents have. I think the relatively small age gap has a large part to play in me being the fave. I have a better memory of what it's like to be his age.

"I actually am kinda hungry." Carl answers, clearly not having realised how hungry he was until me asking him forced him to think about it. I happen to do that to myself on a regular basis as well, I'm often so busy doing something that I forget to eat. Then when I finally do stop from a whole day's work, my hunger catches up with me and I get really _really_ hungry.

"What do you want?" I ask him, sitting Judith on my knee and begin to bounce her up and down gently. She giggles at me adorablly and makes me laugh slightly in response. I feel Carl chuckle next to me as well.

"Can I have _anything_ I want...? You know...as long as we have it?" He pushes his luck because his dad isn't here to stop him. I don't blame him - I did exactly the same thing. In fact, I'd actually be worried he isn't a normal teenager if he didn't take full advantage of me being here here to look after him rather than Rick.

"As long as you have a proper meal, you're not allowed to just eat junk food. You need to get a good meal inside you." I talk to him, although I put my efforts into pulling funny faces at Judith. "I mean you can eat shit all you want afterwards, but you need real food first." I add that I'm not going to ruin all his fun.

"Does pizza count as junk food?" Carl fishes for something he's obviously been waiting for his dad to be gone to execute.

"You mean that frozen Hawaiian pizza that your dad though he hid without you seeing?" I ask, raising my eyebrows at him. I watch his expression transform into a cheeky smile as he realised he's been caught out. I already had his card marked, Rick did a really bad job at hiding it so I found it as well.

"Yeah. That one." He grins.

"As much as it is junk food, you can have it." I grin back at him. I stand up, swapping Judith from my knee to my arm. "Are you joining me in the kitchen or are you going to stay in here and look after your sister?" I give him the option. I thought he would want to stay where he was as a result of him being tired from him having spent the whole day running around all over the place, but he surprised me.

"I'll come." He stands with me as well. He carefully takes Judith from me without me needing to ask him. I transfer the little one from my arms to Carl's. He reminds me so much of Rick sometimes that it's almost scary; I say almost because they each have their distinct unique traits. The whole thing with Carl now missing an eye creates a huge wedge between their similarities. I'm honestly not sure if that's something I'll _ever_ get used to. "Auntie Al? Does wanting to kill someone make me a bad person?" He asks me out of nowhere.

I unsure whether to be honoured or shocked that I'm the only one he trusts enough to talk so openly about such serious, personal things. I'm constantly humbled by how comfortable he is with going into deeper topics that even I'm uncomfortable with discussing sometimes. There is a kind of sadness there surrounding him not being able to have these talks with his dad, all it does it put more distance between them.

"I'm going to assume we're talking about the big bad Negan and make you aware right from the get-go that while he murdered Abraham and Glenn in front of you and he does make it harder for us to live our lives, I've never met the guy. I don't even know what he looks like. I hate him, don't get me wrong, but it's a lot harder for me to hate him as deeply as you do when I have nothing to imagine when I think about how much I wish he would just fuck off. To you he's a very real villain, to me he's more of an abstract concept. You physically saw him kill our friends, I never. You have more to hang on to than I do. I heard the disagreement you had with him over them taking all of the medicine." I talk through the entire process of me removing the pizza from it's packaging and putting it on a tray to shove it into the oven. "I know what he sounds like and that's it. But besides all of that, no, it doesn't make you a bad person." I try giving him some peace of mind that it's okay to feel the way he does.

"Why does it not?" Carl starts asking questions that I'm going to have great difficulty finding answers for.

I close the oven door and turn round to face him as I think through what I can say to him that's going to make at least some sense. I often know what I want to say, the issue being that most of the time my intentions get lost in translation in the conversation between my brain and my mouth.

"Because you're not a bad person, Carl. Negan is. He is an evil man, there's something in his brain that doesn't quite work in the way it should, in the way that we're used to. You're not evil. When he wants to kill someone, I should imagine that it's for all the wrong reasons. When you want to kill some, like you want to kill him, it's because he's killed people you cared about, because the feelings you have towards him that make you want to murder him are justified. He killed our friends in cold blood. He can bullshit all he wants about his reasons for doing what he did, but the bottom line is that it's still bullshit and it always will be no matter how much you polish it." I hope that highlighting the key difference between him and the very person he wants to kill will help him see how he's not a bad person with more clarity.

"I'm glad I can talk to you." He smiles limply, looking up at me from his hand-me-down sheriff's hat. "You actually listen to me. You don't flip out on me." He opens up a little bit more as to why he talks to me and avoids talking to his dad. It pushes a few things to slot into place where they previously didn't. What he's saying is very valid; Rick does get uptight about these things more often than he doesn't. I have the feel that if Carl would have tried talking to Rick about this, he would have put him under house arrest so he couldn't try killing him.

"You act like a hardman, but you're a soppy git really." I say stepping into his bubble and tightly wrapping my arms around him (and his sister). I squeeze them tight and he makes the effort to put his free arm around me and pat me on the back, which I take as his signal for being ready for me to let go of him.

"As long as you don't tell anyone." He jokes, being kind enough to treat me to his signature cheeky grin.

"You're secret's safe with me, bud." I wink at him. "I'm not cruel enough to tell Enid." I hint and being the embarrassing aunt and telling her everything he did as a kid that he would hate me for telling anyone about. He blushes at the mention of her name, but doesn't bother arguing with me, he knows I wouldn't do that to him.

**[[[]]]**

I spent last night sleeping on Carl's bedroom floor. It may seem like it with the amount of time I spend here, but I don't actually live in this house. I wanted to give these guys the space they need to be able to do what they want without me getting in their hair all of the time. I live in the house next door with Daryl, Aaron and Eric. Aaron and Eric take the master bedroom and me and Daryl each have our own rooms. So, with me not actually living here, I don't have a bed here. I was more than happy to sleep on the sofa in the front room. My plans changed when Carl came to see me when I was in Judith's room, putting her down to sleep for the night. He originally offer his own bed for me to sleep in, but I wouldn't want to do that to him. Instead, I suggested I take all the cushions off the sofa and make a mattress out of them by laying them out across the floor. It was an alternative to me outright refusing such a kind gesture from him.

Considering I'd spent the night on the floor, I didn't feel that bad at all waking up this morning. I've always been a late riser (and when I say that I really mean I'm not a morning person in the slightest) so I was alone in the house by the time I woke. Both Carl and Michonne were out and about by the time I'd dragged my own sorry ass out of bed. At the mention of my brother's new partner, I'm pretty sure she doesn't like me, that he never liked me. Then again, I'm also pretty sure she doesn't like anyone very much. She clearly likes Rick, Carl and Judith and that's about it.

So far, today has been spent in the same way yesterday was. Accept today, even though Rick isn't here to stop me from going anywhere, I can't leave because I'm looking after Judith as I promised I would.

At this very current moment in time, I'm abusing this dry patch of weather we've been having by chilling out on the front porch steps, watching Judith as she entertains herself by playing in the grass. It makes me look like a nutcase and I'm well aware of the fact, but I pass the time by doodling little cartoons on the face of my bat using a Sharpie marker that was still in the back of a draw when we moved in here.

I like drawing small characters, superheroes, villains and so I draw them. Drawing on paper seems too temporary in a world that's so destructive - that's why I draw on something stronger and more permanent than a flimsy bit of paper. I must really sound like a psycho now. The sheer concept of turning a lethal weapon into a type of art have a wonderful sick sense of irony surrounding it.

"I think you and this Negan guy would get along great; you're both wacos who like to crack skulls with your bats." Tara comments walking towards me. She takes a seat next to me on the step up from the one I'm sitting on. I would consider her my best friend, with that being independent to her seeing me as her best friend or not. It was horrible when she was gone for so long, especially without anyone knowing what happened to her. Nobody knew if she was alive or not, safe or enslaved. In a sense, it's worse than someone dying, because at least when someone dies the people they leave behind get the closure they need to be able to grieve. When someone goes away like that, all you can do it keep on going in the hope that they are alive and well.

"That's not something you should be making jokes about." I spin around 90 degrees and point the end of my bat at her. "And for the record, I am _not_ like him." I slap her on the thigh, once she's sat down, as a comeback for being so goddamn rude.

"What was that for? I'm not allowed to joke about something that's true? You know full well that if you try telling me that both are you are perfectly sane and that you don't wield a softball bat as your weapon of choice, then you're a stone cold liar." She laughs, snatching the marker off me as I'm halfway through drawing a space rocket. It's part of a collection of planets and aliens that make up their own wildly out of proportion universe. It suits my rather odd personality.

"Not when the guy you're comparing me to probably gets off on bashing people's' brains out and enjoys making others feel like minutes worthless pieces of shit. I argue, confident that I've shut down any attempts at her comparing me to him.

"You know...this one kind of looks like you." She winds me up further by pointing at one of the aliens I've drawn. I raise my eyebrows questioningly at her in conjunction with a sideways glance. She goes back to talking nonsense anyway. "No it really does. It's tallish and skinny and it's squinting because it's lost it's glasses and can't see shit." She makes another cheap dig at me. Without he being around, I almost achieved the impossible of forgetting how relentless she is.

"Listen, when you're running to save your ass from being eaten alive by walkers, keeping your glasses on your face isn't your number one priority." I remark. I try leaning up against the bannister so I can look at my friend when I'm talking to her. "And second of all, I can see enough 'shit' to be able to get by just fine. I'm not dead yet." I inform her. If the day comes which presents me with the opportunity of picking up another pair of specs then I will by all means. But I'm not risking life and limb to go get some. My sight isn't that bad just yet, I can live without them. I put my bat down on the step below my feet to stop Tara from comparing me to any more of my little creations.

"I'll get you some if I see any, like some really _really_ thick framed ones. The kind you would have got beaten up for wearing in the 80s." She mentions distantly as she puts the lid back on my marker and passes it back over to me. I have a feeling that her humour so has has been nothing more than a mask for how she's truly feeling on the inside. I walked into the news of Abraham and Glenn being killed in the same way someone gets hit by a truck. Not only that, but she's had to deal with the death of her girlfriend on top of that. There's not a chance she's as fine as she's pretending to be.

"Without sounding like a complete bitch, did you need something, did you want to talk? Or did you come over to see me in the frame of mind of doing nothing other than constantly insulting me the entire time?" I fail epically at trying to ask that without sounding rude. I put my arm around her and squeeze her into my side to make up for my lack of sensitivity.

"You see, rumour has it that Rick took the pizza that everyone wanted. Olivia told me you might let me have it if I asked nicely., so I came to ask if you loved me enough to steal it from your brother and let me have it?" She asks and tilts her head to the side so she's resting it on my shoulder.

I personally can't believe how much everyone loses their mind over the news of a damn pizza, but it doesn't make me feel any better about not being able to give it to her. " Umm...babe, don't think I don't love you, but I let Carl eat it last night." I start feeling like a bit of a shit person. "I'm really sorry. I promise I'll give the next one I come across to you. I'll ask Rick where he found that one because I don't believe for one second he only found one pizza." I base this upon the fact that you don't find anything in single units any more. Products made before everyone died are becoming so scarce that anything to be found now is something that nobody else has come across yet. It's all or nothing. There's no middle ground anymore.

"I tell you what, you find me a pizza, I'll find you a pair of glasses so you can see in HD again and we'll trade them. How about that?" She straightens herself up, seeming to have clawed back enough positivity to get herself going again. She stands up and readies herself to leave. "I know you'll be more motivated if you're looking for something for me, it's kind of a win-win when you think about it." She winks, turns, waves goodbye and leaves me to be on my own once more.

[[[]]]

Putting aside all the nasty and evil things I've been told and heard about him, I was very wrong to underestimate exactly how crazy Negan is. There are 4 definitions used in psychology to define the abnormality of humans - he fits into all of them apart from one. It really is disconcerting that a man so clearly mentally disturbed has so much power and is in control of so many people, so many communities.

I was also stupid to think that Carl only _wanted_ to kill him. I've been so ignorant by not keeping a closer eye on him following the conversation we had last night. To be fair, I had no idea he had actually come up with a plan on how he was going to do it. You only need to start worrying when people plan things. He has no intentions of telling me how serious he was about the whole thing, I could have helped him if he would have told me. He knows that.

To cut and long story short, my darling nephew went on an ever so slight rampage to the complex where the Saviours live in a failed attempt to gun their leader down. I know he's just a kid with tunnel vision on his end goal of killing the big guy, but, really, how stupid can you be? No matter how much I love him, it's not going to stop him from being so dense. He doesn't think about anything before he does it. He acts first and stops to think about the consequence when they've already got him around the neck.

Right now, everything is rapidly turning to shit without Rick being here to handle it. Negan is quickly making his way up here with Carl closely in tow, following him like a dog. I highly doubt he's going to be wanting to see anyone besides Rick. He's going to be at the front door any second and I'm still stood downstairs watching out the window, frozen still by a blind panic. He can't find out about Judith, he doesn't know about he either, but keeping her a secret is more important than me. I'm nothing more than a side quest.

After an extended period of standing there, not knowing what to do with myself, I finally snap out of it and sprint upstairs as quickly as I can without running the risk of dropping Judith.

I successfully make it into Judith's room, put her down in her crib gently as not to disturb her, quietly leave the room, shut the door behind myself and race back down the stairs. My foot lands of the last step a split second after I hear the back door crack open and the thudding of heavy boots reverberate throughout the house. I've still not even seen the guy yet and I'm already terrified.

"My, my, little man. This is a _nice_ place you have here." A deep grainy voice announces, louder than anyone needs to when they're talking to the person stood next to them. I'm starting to think he doesn't do anything by halves. I know it's him, it can't possibly be anyone else. "Is there anyone home?" He raises his voice again, louder this time. I clench my eyes for a moment in hoping that his excessive yelling doesn't disturb Judith. Him waking her up and causing her to cry would be game over. All our efforts at keeping for from him would be wasted, flushed down the pan all in one foul swoop. At least if we don't have any other luck for the next week, we are fortunate enough for Judith to remain silent. She doesn't make a single peep. Seeing as she shows no signs of me needing to run upstairs and defend her, I step forward to reveal myself, putting myself right into plain sight of the heartless brute who killed my friends.

I stand there timidly, making myself look more pathetic than I want to. I literally see the last tiny bit of hope leave the light of Carl's eyes when he sees me. He didn't want Negan to meet me even more than Rick did, as impossible as that may seem. He wanted me to stay hidden. He makes eye contact with me. All I can bring myself to do is shake my head at him, in sheer disbelief at the position he's landing himself and the rest of us in.

As soon as his vision lands on me, Negan's demeanour shifts slightly. He adopts a disconcerting look in his eyes as he stares at me. He puts a dirty baseball bat, wrapped menacingly with barbed wire at the thicker end away from the handle. He unzips his worn black leather jacket and uses both hands to push back his already slick hair. He advances towards me and it causes me to start sweating and to trigger numbness in my hands and legs.

"Well... _hello_ there. You'll have to excuse me, I would have dressed up nice if somebody would of told me I was going to be in the company of a woman as _smoking hot_ as yourself." He geers while taking the liberty of waltzing his way into my personal bubble. As if my teenage nephew being taller than me didn't make me feel short, being so close to this towering example of a human certainly does. He must be at least 6 foot, plus however much taller his boots make him look. I still hate him, like Rick said, being in the same room as him only acts as a catalyst, but what has surprised me is how _not_ unattractive he is. His vile personality painted an ugly physically appearance of him in my head. It's a microscopic shame that he has to be the one everyone hates.

I'm going to hell for a very long time as a punishment for thinking such things about him - I'm already more than aware of it.

"Nobody told me I should be expecting company either." I comment. I feel all the heat in my body rush to my cheeks. I feel like an idiot for saying that, what a way to go making a first impression. I should consider other things before I gush out the first thing that comes to mind. I send an unimpressed look in Carl's direction so he knows that statement was a snide comment directed at him. He shoots an equally as unimpressed look right back at me, but I couldn't care if he's upset with me for the way I'm treating him. He's the one who tried killing Negan without giving it much thought, not me.

"Oh, of _course_ you didn't, darlin'. This is an impromptu visit. I didn't know I was going to be paying you a visit, myself, until young Carl, here, jumped out of the back of one of my vans and tried to _kill_ me. I mean, can you _believe_ that?" He smiles wickedly; his grin so sickening that it makes my stomach turn. The way he emphasises a word in every sentence he speaks makes me more uncomfortable than anyone has ever made me before.

"Surprisingly, I actually do believe it. I wouldn't put anything past him." I maintain eye contact with Carl as I continue to put up a front, pretending that I'm not absolutely shitting it right now. I'm only putting on a brave face because showing fear, or weakness, in front of someone like Negan is a very dangerous game to be playing. "He always has been one to push the rules as far as he can. You'd have thought he would have known better with his dad being a Sheriff's Deputy."

"Rick was a cop? That makes _soooo_ much more sense." I mentally curse myself for giving my new acquaintance more leverage to psychologically hurt Rick with. "You seem to know an _awful_ lot about the fearless leader of this pretty place where you live. So, do tell me my dear, what's your relation to him?" He asks me.

"How do you kn-" I fall at the first hurdle in lying to him. He shoots me down so quickly it's a challenge to comprehend. He stops me instantly in my tracks, not giving me any time to rearrange my thoughts.

" _Do not_ lie to me." He shouts the his first sentence, returning back to his regular speaking voice for his next passage of speech. "Unlike you seem to be, I am _not_ just a pretty face. Any moron could work out you're related, you all have a similar _look_ about you. Heck! You all have that _same damn_ death glare. The one you gave him just now." Negan motions to Carl. His tone of voice is getting more and more sinister with each word that falls out of his mouth. He pauses for effect and steps impossibly closer to me. " _This_ time, you're going to tell me how you're related to this boy without even _thinking_ about any other bullshit you were going to try and pull on me."

I take a deep breath, catching a glimpse of Carl shaking his head at me. He wants me to lie, but doing that isn't going to help anyone. If he finds out I'm lying, it's only going to cause more pain further down the line. It makes more sense not to dig myself a deeper hole than I'm already struggling to climb out of. I sigh deeply, taking in enough oxygen to get my next words out. "Carl's my nephew." I sigh again, pushing all of the air out of my lungs. I never have been any good at lying anyway. I was the kind of kid that always got caught out with my parents and teachers because I couldn't lie to them without them seeing straight through me. "I'm Rick's sister." I sit out the truth.

It frightens me to see that evil flicker find it's way back across his eyes for a fraction of a second. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a _whole_ lot hotter than your brother is?" He leans in dangerously close, so close that I feel the silky material of his scarf brush my cheek. He whispers in a register so low, goosebumps race down my arms, legs and spine.

I take a step back from him without saying a word. I let my eyes fall to the floor, I can't bring myself to look at anything else. I don't say anything at all because I believe it's the right move to make here in this situation. I have nothing to come back with. I stand there, perfectly still, as I wait for him to say something crude that I can reply to sarcastically. Sarcasm always has been my trump card.

"No? _Not_ funny?" He presses, beginning to sound progressively pissed off with me not playing along with him as well as I probably should be. He looks to lock eyes with me, but this time I don't look away from him. If I have the opportunity to take the smallest of victories away from him (like not letting him with this staring contest), then that's exactly what I'm going to do. He notices me staring him down and I think he's actually _enjoying_ it. He presses his lips together tightly right before going on to display all his shockingly white teeth in another shit eating grin. He rocks back on his heels and bends his legs briefly, quickly straightening himself back up to his previous posture.

"Speaking of your pain-in-the-ass brother...when is he going to be back?" He stuns the resting silence hanging in the room between us. I physically jump, but he doesn't say anything about it.

"I don't know. He's not going to be back any time soon though. If you're waiting for him to come back, you're going to be waiting quite a while." I explain with the feeble hope of encouraging him to come back another time. I don't know if I have the energy to be dealing with this shit today. I look down to the area around his chin as I start talking to him. I didn't mean to look away first, I just forgot myself. "He's gone out looking for supplies for you." I force myself to keep talking to fill the void with no one else willing to speak up instead. There isn't much I hate more than awkward silences where you're waiting for someone to respond to something you've said.

"That is _not_ a problem. I've got a few idea on how we can pass the time." He winks at me like he owns me, which he sure as hell does not. I clench my jaw as he can't read my expression as well. If he could see how tempted I am to give him what he wants - based purely on his looks - Carl would be able to read me as well and I can't have that. It's not something he needs to it. I don't want anything to taint his image of me. The worst thing isn't that though, it's that I'm even _considering_ giving in to him. It's _very very_ wrong of me, I know that, but there's part of me that can't help myself. And I know it's not an excuse, not in the slightest, but I've not seen any action in a long time and it just happen to fall right into my lap?

But no. Stop it Alex. You can't be doing this. Snap out of it.

"Seeing as we've got some time to kill," Negan speaks up again, stepping forward into the small distance I previously put between the two of us. "I think it would be enjoyable to screw your brains out, I mean, if you're agreeable to it." He turns side on and raises his eyebrows at me. He smiles, he doesn't grin, he genuinely smiles, which is every bit as worrying as a pyromaniac with a shit load of grenades.

I look right at him. Words can't possibly express how morally and internally conflicted I am at his request. Half of me wants nothing more than to go upstairs with him and let him do exactly that to me. The other, more reasonable, moral and annoying half of my brain won't let me. It stops me with an internal voice screaming at me to punch that son of a bitch in the face. Break his nose maybe, I feel it would be a pleasing feeling.

"You don't mess around do you? You just dive straight in with what you want, don't you?" I dance the tango with the line that separates the difference between me insulting him and flirting with him.

"What can I say? Subtlety never was my strong suit." He doesn't seem to insulted, it must have been flirting. I never should have said that either. Talks about giving someone the wrong idea. Seriously? _Flirting_ with him? What the hell is wrong with me?

All within the space of a second, my brain comes up with a plan. A plan that flips this terrible proposal into a golden opportunity. It can works as a distraction. If he's busy getting laid, there's no way he's going to notice anything else going on around inside the house.

I step as close to him as I virtually can without climbing him. I stand on my toes to whisper into his ear, his height causing me to have to put a hand on his shoulder to stop myself from toppling over. "If you go upstairs, make your way into the room directly to your right when you reach the top and make yourself comfortable...I'll grab your baseball-"

" _Lucile_." He whispers back. I don't understand why he doesn't say that aloud, but I guess I don't need to know. All I need to be grateful for is that he's not crushed my skull with it yet. It doesn't matter what he calls it. It does make him crazy, but it doesn't matter.

"I'll grab Lucile for you," I continue talking after having been interrupted, "and I promise I'll be with you quicker than the time it takes you to get your pants off." I whisper directly into his ear. I only ask him to do this as a way of getting him to give me a few seconds alone with Carl. I won't need any longer than that. I need to talk to him so I can get him to understand why I'm doing this. I need him to see I'm doing this so he can sneak upstairs, snap Judith up and take her to somewhere away from Negan. To keep her safe.

"Yes _ma'am_." He doesn't catch on. Thankfully for me, he doesn't catch on to me wanting to get to Carl. He so blind sighted at the prospect of having sex with me he's not thinking straight. He loves walking around like he's something special, but he's just as predictable as any other creep that's tried hitting on me. He's not the first guy to go pulling a stunt like this. The only thing he is the first to do is get me into bed without me having to be blind drunk to crawl in there with him.

He instantly makes his way over to the stairwell. He takes his clunky boots off before he goes up any further wearing them. Even multiple years into the end of the world, where most social rules don't have an effect any more, and a monster like him is taking his shoes off before going upstairs? In what universe does that make sense?It scares me to see there's a part of him that's still human. He starts on his way up the stairs, he pauses as he pushes himself up onto the first step. "You _better_ not keep me waiting, I'm not about to let you pull a fast one on me." He turns back around right away and continues on his way before waiting for me to react to him in anyway.

"I wouldn't dream of it." I holler back at him as he starts ascending the stairs and rush over to Carl. Pick up the dreaded baseball bat, rather Lucile, wrapped with barbed wire. Knowing what it looks like, having held a baseball bat myself before, it's still _a lot_ heavier that I prepared for it to be. At least, it _feels_ heavier than it should be.

"Al, what are you doing?" Carl begs. Big tears are starting to fall from the corners of his eyes. " _Why_ are you doing this? It's not right. You don't have to do this." He desperately rushes out all at once. He looks distant as he talks to me. It breaks my heart to see him look at me like that.

"Carl? CARL!" I snap my fingers to get his attention away from anything that isn't me. "Eyes on me, nothing else." I demand. "I need you to listen to me and you need to listen to me good. You need to creep upstairs, take Judith and put here somewhere away from him." I give him instructions that he needs to follow, there's no room for movement there. "I'm doing this so you can get your sister without him seeing, without him seeing. That's the _only_ reason I'm doing this." I wipe the tiniest of tears from my own face, before it has the chance to transform into something more. I kiss him on the forehead and run upstairs because I've already taken far longer than I should have done. I have no doubt that Negan most definitely has his pants strewn across the bedroom floor already. I take one more look at Carl ahead of climbing the steps; I honestly couldn't feel any worse for making Carl's day 100 times shittier than it already was. 

**[[[]]]**


	2. || Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours

“I sure hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.” Negan turns onto his side and faces me, which is as far from what I expected him do after he was finished with me as possible. I had every impression that he would use me to get laid and then piss off right afterwards without so much as muttering a single word to me. I goes to show that you should never make assumptions. As much as he’s clearly a raving lunatic, he still has these personal morals that he wouldn’t ever dare to break. He doesn’t like men taking what they want from women without getting their approval first. He’s a rare case. Normally people like him don’t care about things like that as much as he does, that’s if they care at all, because usually the issue is that they’re unable to register that what they’re doing is unacceptable. They can’t see the difference between right and wrong.

He rests the side of his face in his hand, propping himself up on his elbow. He doesn’t look like he’s in any rush to be going anywhere any time soon. Which is a shame, all I want now is for him to leave so I can lay here and wallow in my own self hate. I don’t want to have to spend more time with this man than I need to. However, saying all that, one the one hand it is nice that he hasn’t tossed me aside like an item of dirty laundry. Maybe this whole getting consent thing covers not making women feel like shit as well. And if it is, regardless of anything else, you have to give him credit for that.

“That all depends on just how much fun you did have, I suppose.” I play it as cool as I can while turning myself around to lay on my back. I look straight up and concentrate on nothing more than a single spot on the ceiling about me. I lay completely still, my shoulders upwards still exposed. I keep chest and downwards covered up by the bedding to retain any modesty I still have left. Alternatively, Negan has opted for the more revealing option of being naked from his hips upwards, the covers hanging  _ rather  _ low across his hips at that. I don’t know why, but the amount of tattoos he has came as a surprise to me. For some reason I didn’t think he’d have any at all. He has tattoos dotted around his upper body - he has two tattoos on each of this arms, one on the left of his upper torso and another on the back of his shoulder. They look good on him. Seeing the ink in his skin makes me wish I’d have gone through with getting one myself. The reason I never got one is because I change my mind a lot, I could never think of anything I wanted enough to be sure that I was going to be happy with it on my body for the rest of my life.

“I  _ thoroughly  _ enjoyed myself, I can assure you of that.” He reinforces his earlier suggestive statement of him having had a good time. In all honestly, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy myself, but that doesn’t mean I should go admitting it to anyone, especially not him. The last thing his already too big ego needs is a boost. He looks good and he knows it, it’s not like he needs the encouragement either. I wonder if he knows how great he looks right now, in this very second, looking like a normal guy who’s just enjoying himself.

God, I really should not be thinking like that. It doesn’t matter how true they are, as soon as you start thinking about bad people like that, you trip and fall into a steep downwards spiral. You identify with the seemingly human part of them that’s still there and you’ve fallen head-first into their trap. You feel sorry for them, you develop feelings for them, they draw you in and that’s the end of it. They start controlling every aspect of your life.

As hypocritical as it may sound, I allow myself the pleasure of turning and looking at him for a second to run my eyes over his body. There’s no denying that he’s an attractive guy. Not in the stereotypical, male super model way of having chiseled abs and not a single hair on the entire length of their body. He’s good looking in the rugged sense of normal people. The kind of handsome that you don’t notice the first time you look at him, the kind of have to spend a while examining before you can really appreciate.

Figuring he’s to get me to say any more than that, Negan fully turns himself over onto his other side, facing away from me. I can’t help myself from flipping myself onto my side to face him and mirror his previous position of keeping himself up on his elbow. He swings his legs around to hang over the side of the bed. He sighs deeply as he runs his hands over his hair in a bid to ensure it’s still in its trademark slicked back style and proceeds by pushing himself up onto his feet and walking over to the pile of clothes he left on the floor near the dressing table. He doesn’t seem to care that I’m watching him walk around the room completely naked, which reminds me that I must say he has a wonderful ass. I know, I officially hate myself for looking so much as well. It would make more sense if he were to laugh at me or smirk or make some smartass comment about it, but he doesn’t. It feels like he’s trying to pretend I’m not here.

I huff and kick the covers off myself too, really wishing that I’d my clothes closer by so I wouldn’t have to join him in doing the nude walk of shame.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Negan cations me from the other side of the room as he pulls his boxers up his legs and shifts them around his waist so he has them in a comfortable position. “You don’t need to do that. You stay there for awhile and come join me when you’re ready.” He instructs me, an odd gesture on his part. No matter how hard I think about it, I can’t come up with a logical reason as to why he would ask that of me. He doesn’t get anything out of it and it’s really starting to bother me how soft he’s being on me. “Women deserve to be respected, it would hardly be respectful of me to stand here and watch you dress, now would it? You just lay there and admire the view.” There it is. There’s the cock sure comment I was waiting for him to come out with. His next move is to step into his pants, one leg at a time, and make quick work of fastening his belt once he’s got them up round his waist. After that he bends down to pick up his thin white t-shirt and puts it on my pulling it over his head with ease. It puts his hair slightly out of place, but he soon fixes it. The tattoo on his chest is semi-visible through the thin material and all the others are at least partially visible. The ones on his upper arms are peaking out of the bottom of the short sleeves and the ones on his forearms are as clear as day, obviously.

He leaves his leather jacket, red scarf and lethal weapon strewn out across the carpeted floor as he swaggers his way over to me. He walks around to stand next to me, between the wall and the side of the bed. Playing the role of a gentleman, he decently covers me up by grabbing the top of the blanket and pulling it all the way up to my neck. I hook the sheets underneath my arms and follow him closely with my eyes.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” My mouth runs before my brain has the chance to think about it. It’s like an impulse. When this happens it just makes me feel like a fool. I should have thought about that before saying something like that. Asking a question like that can get a person in a lot of trouble when you’re dealing with a livewire like Negan.

“I’m not being nice,  _ per se. _ ” He explains, “You did something for me, it would be rude of me not to do something to help you out. It’s more of a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch your back’ kind of deal.” He puts it into perspective to enlighten me. He gracefully lowers himself down to sit on the very edge of the bed beside me. “By doing this, doing something you  _ didn’t have to do _ , you’ve set yourself from everyone else out there. Although you were  _ clearly  _ terrified of me, you did were smart enough to figure out that it would pay off for you.” He stares at me the entire time he talks to me. His eyes feel like they’re burning holes into the back of my skull. “You make a strong first impression, I like that.” He breaks it down for me and it infuriates me to know that part of what he’s saying is right. Even if it wasn’t the intention, the calculations were going on in the background.

“You’re a very complex man, Negan.” Saying his name out loud feels like a mistake, like I shouldn’t say it. Like how Voldemort’s name shouldn’t be said in Harry Potter.

He smiles to himself and shakes his head as it falls to the floor in the same motion, looking back up me less than a second later. “You know, I also  _ love  _ the way you speak your mind. The bravest men I know don’t even have balls to say it to my face. I admire that.”  He furrows his brows together and nods his approval.

I feel like the way this initial meeting of his has gone, with me willingly sliding into bed with him, has partially desensitised me to the shit Negan has done to us, what he’s capable of. It was a mistake, I’ve since come to realise that, but no matter how much bitching and moaning I do, there’s nothing I can do to change it. I can’t take it back.

“Thanks.” It’s the only response I can come up with which doesn’t risk me overstepping my place. I don’t stand anywhere with him, so it’s next to impossible to be able to judge when an overly sarcastic remark is okay and when it isn’t. All I know in this moment, is that it would be terrible to go fucking up after playing the game so well.

“You know…” He begins, rising to his feet again and slowly strolls over to the remainder of his belongings. “You told me your Rick Grime’s  _ sister _ , but you never did tell me your name.” He kneels down to pick up his things and turns to face me once he’s got a hold of them; he sets Lucille (at least I think that’s what he called it) down on the dressing table to free up his arms. He puts his leather jacket back on and he starts to look like the bad guy everyone knows him to be.

“Alexus.” I tell him my name, being quite abrupt about it and then thinking better of it. “Mind you, nobody calls me that. Most people call me Alex. Some call me Al.” I tell him more than I really need to. Normally I’d introduce myself with just my proper name, not with a nickname of any sort, but nobody ever calls me by it anyway. It really doesn’t make a difference either way. “Or if you’re Rick you switch between what you call me depending on the mood you’re in.” I add at the last minute. I watch Negan closely as he zips himself up, secures the fastening around the bottom and keeps his eyes trained on me with every word I say.

“I think it’s a real shame nobody calls you that. Your name is almost as pretty as you are.” He lays the flattery on thick. He compliments me with a wink. He strides over to the door, Lucile in hand. He wraps his hand around the handle, pushes it down and takes a second to stand in the open doorway. “You wouldn’t happen to have any idea where your pain-in-the-ass nephew would have gone to, would you, Alexus?” Hearing someone so feared, so hated, say my name and make it sound so natural causes my stomach to do somersaults, not the good kind either.

“He won’t have gone far. If he’s anywhere, he’ll most likely be next door with Eric or sitting outside on the porch steps.” I hazard a guess at where he is. Not that he’s going to know who Eric is by his name, but ‘next door’ is pretty self explanatory. Unless he goes to the wrong side that is.

He nods his head, he seems to do that a lot. “I’ll be seeing you later.” He smirks and exits the room. Once he’s out of the door, even though I can no longer see him, I can still hear him thrashing around. He walks around like it’s his god given right to own the place. It sounds like he’s trying to make as much noise as possible as he clambers down the staircase and he finishes his performance by slamming the door as hard as he can on his way out.

As soon as I’m alone, I sigh deeply and go against Negan’s instructions by instantly jumping out of bed and gathering up my clothes rather than lazing around for a bit like he asked me to. I throw my clothes on in a bid to make myself decent again. Negan hanging around for longer than I anticipated has already given me all the time I needed to lay around feeling sorry for myself. It’s time to get up and try to move on.

[[[]]]

The quick turn around of me getting my shit back together meant that Negan had a smaller window of time to be alone with Carl, which can only be a good thing. By the time I’d made my way downstairs Negan was already on his way back with Carl;. That much doesn’t bother me so much, but what does it that, for some fucking reason, he’s carrying his little sister in his arms. The same little girl I was protecting by screwing Negan so Carl could take her somewhere that he wouldn’t find her. Carl did successfully make his way upstairs and he did get her without alerting anyone, but it seems to have gone wrong somewhere between him doing that and Negan going over there to get him. Negan knowing about Judith, knowing that she’s Carl’s younger sister, puts me in a rather compromising position. Negan is a smart man and it wouldn’t take a lot for him to work out that I was using him to my own advantage.

Nevertheless, I skip over to the front door and open it up to Negan and Carl before they have even made it up the front steps. I extend this courtesy because Negan being allowed to let himself in here as he pleases is not a behaviour I want to reinforce with him. That as well as him most likely going to want to talk to me about Judith. There’s no point in running from your problems, I’ve done that enough times to establish that it doesn’t do any good. They always come back to bite you in the ass anyway.

I cover the distance to the front door and yank it open by pulling it inwards towards me with a firm grip on the handle. I stand to the side and lean up against the side of the door once it’s open. Negan steps past me first, Lucile resting safely on his shoulder, and smiles as he does do. Carl follows in after him, looking like a naughty puppy with his tail between his legs. He looks at me, but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. The guilt in his eyes is enough alone.

“Alexus, my dear, I’m surprised you can _walk_ so soon after that.” Negan beams without any regard at all as to how much Carl really didn’t need to hear that. I can’t imagine how gross hearing that was for him. He steps way too close to me, which I’m starting to hate more and more each time he does it. I step away from the door and he shuts it for me. His gaze doesn’t leave mine for a second, like he’s sizing me up to see what I’m made of and how much it would take to break me.

“I wouldn’t advise starting a staring contest with me, I’m pretty good at those.” I challenge him considering that he’s waiting for me to be the first one to look away. And if that’s what he wants, that’s the  _ last  _ thing I want to go doing. All he’s trying to do is intimidate me and I need to try my hardest not to look weak in front of Carl, not again.

“ _ You are a gem _ .” He stresses every word in that sentence, “I don’t think there’s anything that turns me on work that a woman with confidence like that.” I get the impression that he’s thinking out loud. I want to slap him, I really do, but I know better than that and that’s the only reason I haven’t thus far. I’d like to think I’m not that stupid, despite my track record of fuck ups. I look over at Carl and see that he literally couldn’t look less pleased to have to be witnessing this. I quickly look back at Negan, knowing that I’ve lost. “Regardless of whether they win or not.” Negan adds upon taking his small victory.

I watch him as he watches me. In an attempt to keep myself calm, I push my tongue against the inside of my cheek and force myself to think about things that are far away from here; it stops my hands from shaking and slows my breathing down. It’s probably the worst feeling in the world, feeling like the walls are caving in on you and like you’re suffocation on oxygen.

“Say, have you got any lemonade?” Negan does a sharp 180 degree turn on the topic of conversation. The sheer diversity of the two stuns me.

“No. We don’t.” I answer almost as sharply as he turned the mood around. I look over at Carl again, wanting nothing more than to ask him what the hell went wrong. He was supposed to save Judith, Negan was never supposed to find her. She is the most precious thing we have and now the last person we want to know about it can use it against up whenever he wants. I let Negan liberate me for absolutely no reason, I might as well have told him to take a hike. When I say liberate, that exactly what he did. He got me in front of him on my hands and knees and he didn’t look at my face once, he didn’t acknowledge my existence as a human being. He didn’t say my name, not even once. The asshole didn’t bother asking until after he’d finished. I’ve never felt so abused in my entire life and for what cause? Apparently, a failed one.    

“I  _ know  _ you have some around here, somewhere. You know, the powdered kind.” He pauses to take Lucile  down off his shoulder and have it hanging down by his side. “Do you think you could go get it for me, my dear? Then you can bring it back here and make it  _ real  _ good for me.” He continues to use pet name for me, which proves me wrong in thinking that I couldn’t possibly hate him any more. I wouldn’t mind anyone else calling me names like that. I just hate him doing it because he hasn’t earnt the right to do so like everyone else has.

“Sure.” I bark, flashing him a fake smile to go with it. I can think of a million and one different scenarios on how our predicament could go, but none of them end well. I have about the same amount of things I want to say to Carl, but I can’t do that either because of Negan standing in between us. “Is there anything else I can get for you, sir?” I ask him the hope that he will want something else, it gives me an excuse to be away from him for longer. Leaving Carl and Judith alone with him sounds like a bad idea, I know that. The way I see it, it really doesn’t make a difference whether I’m here with them or not. Me staying with them isn’t going to make anything better. He’s going to keep a close eye on them regardless of anything I say.

“You’re like a firecracker! It’s like you had a personality transplant. What happened, girl? Don’t you like me anymore?” He dodges answering my questions, much to my disappointment. Not to mention how annoying it is when someone answers your question with more questions.

“Oh honey, I never liked you.” I smirk at him this time. I can’t believe I just said that. In my haste to get out of here as quickly as I can without breaking something, I storm out of the door and slam it shut behind me, hard. I don’t give him the opportunity to say anything more. When the door is sealed shut, I press my back up against the solid wood and let out a deep sigh of relief. I throw my head back, in disbelief that I pulled that off without turning into a nervous puddle of goo. I can already feel that I’ve made a mistake by giving Negan the impression that I have even the slightest bit of confidence.

[[[]]]

As I’m sure you already guessed, I took my sweet time finding the lemonade that Negan was going on about. I walked as slowly as I could, if I’d had walked any slower I would have started walking backwards. I ensured Olivia that she could take as long as she wanted trying to find it for me and I successfully managed to waste even more time by stopping to chat to Eric on my way back. He didn’t say much. He spoke about his brief encounter with Negan, when he went round to his place to look for Carl, but said nothing much more than that. What he did say didn’t create any more understanding of how Negan got his hands on Judith either. After running out of things to say, he smiled weakly, hugged me goodbye and they went back about his business. Eric always has been a man of few words; in a world full of such strong individuals, it’s kind of a relief. It’s nice to have someone around who is happier to listen than to talk about themselves for a change.

Drawing the focus back to my miniature quest to find lemonade, of all the things he could want, once I did get back to Rick’s house, I was both happy and kind of daunted to find Tara standing around outside waiting for me. She studies me as I approach her and I can feel the sympathy radiating off of her the second she looks at me.

We don’t exchange any of our normal greetings. No hugs, no hellos, nothing. She promptly jumps feet first into the talk she came here to have with me. I can already tell she’s going to try her hardest to make me let her go in there instead of me.

“You should let me take this one.” She prods me, doing exactly what I said she would. “Just give me the lemonade and I’ll finish this, you go home.” She stations herself between myself and the door I want to go in. She places her hands on her hips, replicating a perfect example of the position she makes every time she tries her hand at getting someone to do something they don’t want to. She knows how dead set I get when once I’ve set my mind to something, she must have come here knowing I wasn’t going to listen. The only thing I can do is give her credit for trying anyway.

“You know that’s not going to happen. My nephew and baby niece are in there, they need me in there.” I internally curse myself for being so hypocritical after doing everything in my power to be away from them and leaving them with the monster inside for as long as I could. “Besides, he’s expecting  _ me  _ to walk back through that door, he’s probably go awol if you went in there. He’s end up hurting someone I care about for something that didn’t need to happen. It’s not worth it.” I express why I don’t think it’s a good idea. Negan is a wildcard, everyone knows that. I’m the only one who should be going in there; it doesn’t matter how much I trust anyone else willing to go in there for me.

“I know what he did to you, Alex. Carl told Eric what happened. You don’t have to do this.” Tara implies something I really did not want to hear. From what she’s saying Eric must have been the one to tell her. She reaches forward and tightly grips my forearm as I make a move to grab the door handle she’s trying to block from me. I don’t push the door open just yet, I need to wait for her to let go of me first.

I lock eyes with her shortly. “What he did to me? He didn’t  _ do  _ anything to me. Whatever you think happened, I promise you it didn’t go down the way you think it did.” I clearly state for the record. Every word of that was true. I would have said exactly the same if I was made to stand before a court and give my statement after being made to swear on the bible. “I told my brother that I would look after his kids, my family, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Even if it literally kills me.” My stern words sink their way through Tara’s skull and into her brain. She huffs loudly, reluctantly stepping aside to let me advance past her and into the house. I push down on the handle, shove the hefty door open with a fair amount of force and force a weak smile, which isn’t fooling anyone, at Tara as I float past her. I feel her squeeze my shoulder on my way past her. She slams the door without giving me any warning and it causes me to physically jump at the bang it makes.

I take a deep breath as I compose myself for the next leg of this unbearably long day - it feels like it’s never going to end. Any time spent in Negan’s company is too long. I stand bolt upright as I look up from the floor at my feet and through to the kitchen. It’s been left in a mess, dirty pots and pans are littering the sink and the area around it.

“Is that you, Alexus?” Do come through and join us.” Negan’s voice bellows through the house from the direction of the grand dining area. He raises his voice adequately to guarantee I can hear him clearly. I don’t like him shouting; it kind of ruins that beautiful grainy tone he has set deep in his vocal chords.

I clench my upper and lower jaws together and bite my tongue to stop myself from saying anything stupid. Doing what I’m told is the best option I have available to me, it’s the most sensible choice. It doesn’t upset anyone and it keeps the man with the baseball bat happy, which means nobody gets hurt. I only need to tow the line with his silly games until Rick gets back and it can’t be much longer until he gets back. He’s already been gone for almost an entire day.

When I turned around the corner into the dining area, the sight I was welcomed to should have come with a health warning. Not being pre-warned that Negan had completely shaved his beard off comes as a shock to the system. Going straight from seeing him with wonderful facial hair to having none at all, without a transition phase of any sort in between the two, makes him look like a an entirely different person altogether. It’s difficult deciding whether I like this more than his previous look to say the least. I always have been a fan of well executed facial hair, which Negan most certainly had down to a T, but he also does an equally good job of making the clean shaven appearance look good as well. It must have something to do with those perfect teeth of his. With or without his beard, that smirk is a work of art - most likely handcrafted by Lucifer himself.

_ Shit. You really need to sort your shit out, Alexus. You really need to get better at keeping my mind out of the gutter. I need to keep my focus homed in on the things that really matter, not things I should even consider thinking about. You can’t like this man. It doesn’t matter how much you want to, you just can’t. Alright? Okay. That’s it, that’s me done, I’m out. No more. _

“Something wrong?” Negan speaks up when he picks up on my stunned silence. He’s playing dumb, he knows exactly what my problem is, yet he still chooses to be an asshole about it. Another one of the things he happens to be naturally talented at. I’ve never met anyone so good at being an ass before meeting him. “Don’t tell me, you like the scruff, didn’t you?” He asks, putting his thumb and index on either side of his chin, running his fingers up and down his recently exposed skin.

I feel like I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. Either answer I give here is going to be the wrong one. Tell him I didn’t like his beard and that’ll piss him off. Tell him I don’t like his new look, that’ll probably piss him off as well. It’s a lose-lose situation if ever I’d seen one. “I umm...I…” I stammer in an unsuccessful bid to come out with something that doesn’t make it sound like he’s getting the better of me.

“I’m just  _ kidding _ !” He bursts out, “why don’t you sit your fine ass down and join us?” He suggests more imperatively than anything else. He extends his arm in gesturing to the seat directly next to him; to his right and my left. He kicks the chair out from underneath the table, removing any need for me to pull my own chair out to sit down.

“Don’t you want me to make the lemonade?” I ask, more than ready to lose my shit if he made me walk all the way over there and back for no fucking reason at all.

“Of course I do. That’s what this decanter of walking is for.” He patronises me whilst simultaneously making a point of picking up the container of water from on the table directly in front of Carl and putting it down in front of the place he wants me to sit. He makes sure that he makes as much noise as he can in the process. “I even got you a  _ spoon  _ to mix it all up with.” He makes it sound like he’s doing me a favour. It amazes me how he could possibly think he’s helping me out, like he thinks he’s a gift from God.

I stride over to stand directly behind my seat. I lean up against the back of the chair so that the top of the back rest is pressing lightly into the very lowest part of my stomach. I take the spotlessly clean spoon from him as he offers it me with his closest hand.

I bring the lemonade tin up to my face, only just realising I was holding it in a death grip. My knuckles are still when I flex my fingers. I attempt to read the tiny print providing the crucial information about the ratio of how much powder is needed for the amount of water I have in front of me. Needless to say, it’s useless. I couldn’t ready this if my life depended on it. I squint my eyes some more in the hope of focusing them, but it’s no good. It doesn’t help, not at all, and it’s not like I can guess how much I need in case I fuck it up.

“Al?” Carl puts his neck on the line by bravely speaking up after managing to keep his mouth shut for quite some time. When he looks up, his hair falls away from his face. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen his eye, or where his eye should be, after the accident. “Do you want me to read it?” He asks me as the blood in my veins starts to boil. Humiliating Carl like that doesn’t bode well with me at all. He didn’t ask to have his eye taken out, he shouldn’t be made to feel bad about it. Not ever.

“ _ Please do  _ excuse+. me for butting in, but what  _ the hell  _ is going on here?” The anger in his voice multiplies by the millisecond. “Can’t you  _ read _ ? Are you telling me you’ve some kind of dyslexia shit or something like that?” He winds me up even further by mocking me before he even know what my issue is. He never does fail to prove what a monumental prick he is.

“I lost my glasses, I struggle to see some things.” I tell him the reason why. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to calm myself down. I keep my cool with him, constantly reminding myself of all the things that could go wrong if I don’t. I can’t afford to lose my temper with him. I know his style - he wouldn’t kill me, he’d kill Carl or Judith or maybe even Rick to make me suffer. So I would have to live with it for the remainder of my days. “What I said about not being able to see some things...that was a lie. I can’t see shit.” I speak up again. I slam the tin down on the hard wooden surface of the table with as much force as I can.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, Darlin’. It’s alright. Give me that, let me do it for you.” He butters me up so much it feels like he’s trying too hard. His mood changing in an instant. He snaps from a cut throat murderer to a gentlemen trying to charm his way into my pants despite having already got into them. What he doesn’t seem to be aware of is that he’s a psychopath. And what a lot of people don’t tend to know is that psychos are charming. They do it to try and coax their way into your life and get you to trust them, but I’ve got his card marked.

[[[]]]

Setting aside the ridiculous notion of having to sit down properly to eat a meal with Negan sitting at the head of the table, the food he made for us was really good. Not that we’re going to tell him that. I guess it’s the result of using whatever supplies you want without having to worry about rations. The bastard probably caused us to not be able to eat well for the rest of the week by going and using up all our food in one go.

After eating the rest of the afternoon followed a series of both weird and frightening turns. For example, if you would have told me this morning that I was going to spend my afternoon chilling out on rocking chairs and playing pool with Negan, I would have told you to shove off and leave me alone.

Myself and Negan were sat drinking whiskey, sunning it up, when Negan commented a pool table being the only thing missing from the ‘perfect’ scene. Because apparently ‘there’s nothing better than a good game of 8-ball’. Accepting his offer of alcohol wasn’t a smart move, I never have been any good at handling my drink. The only benefit it gave me is that I’m an even better pool player when I’ve had a drink or two, compared to when I’m sober.

I told him about the table we had stashed away at the back of the garage of one of the unoccupied houses across the street. When he legitimately suggested that we get it out, I didn’t want to move. I was comfy and I didn’t want to have to hand his ass to him when he lost.

“Couldn’t you have got a couple of your henchmen to do this grunt work for us?” I complain with one final hard shove to straighten up the pool table. It was extraneous work dragging the hefty table from the garage out into the centre of the street where it is now. Me and Negan shifted it all on our own, while he did most of the hard work, he decided we didn’t need any help. The combination of the hot sun and the physical exercise means that I’m sweating buckets. Quite literally. My clothes are soaked from all the sweat that’s still pouring out of me. I have one big sweat patch up the middle of my back and I also have marks under my arms. I know it’s gross, but there’s really not much I can do about it. The only thing I can do is take off my button up shirt and tie it around my waist to leave me in my black vest top with spaghetti shoulder straps. Removing a layer will give me the opportunity to cool off a bit.

“Grunt work, huh? I saw it as a  _ bonding opportunity. _ ” He starts stripping off layers as well. The heat must be getting to him as well. He must be baking in that leather jacket of his. Mind you, he’s still keeping his composure better than I am. He doesn’t actually take his jacket off, he just unzips it and lets the heat escape that way. “And with you stripping for me like that….I think there’s a slight chance it may have worked.” He looks right at me and raises his eyebrows suggestively.

I have nothing to say to that, not anything that’s going to better my current shitty predicament anyway. To save myself from saying something risky, I make a move at changing the subject of the conversation to something entirely different altogether. “So what stakes are we playing for?” I bring up a very important topic. One that I’m serious about, I want something show my victory over him, something I can wear as a badge of honor.

“What are you willing to gamble?” He asks, leaning forward to put his elbows to rest on the edge of the table. He places one of his arms along the top of the other and leans himself forward to stare me down. He’s so cocky that he’ll most likely be willing to bet anything, so I might as push my luck. Plus, the alcohol in my system is only encouraging me to do so.

“That all depend what you want from me.” I grip the edge of the table, mimicking but not perfectly mirroring him. I lean over and instantly regret it as soon as I notice him shamelessly looking down my top. I feel my cheeks flush bright red and my mind flashes back to him having seen more than whatever he can see by looking down my cleavage.

“I know exactly what I want from you, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to like it.” He grins evilly at me, completely ignoring the two or so people starting to gather around us and watch the scene unfold in front of them. “And I’m sure as hell that if you’re  _ half _ stubborn as your brother is, you won’t consider coming back with me at all.” He runs his tongue over his top set of teeth, retaining the smile plastered across his face the whole time.

“ _ Going back with you… _ ” I let the words trail off as I mull over his indication at what he wants as his prize if he were to win this little competition. I weigh up the consequences of the very rare eventuality that I end up losing to him. I make the execute decision that I’m going to push this further than I really should. “Just because I’m stubborn, doesn’t mean I’m not a risk taker.” I remark. I raise my eyebrows as I watch his expression take the form of a man who has something worth playing for. I always have been a gambler. “I’m more than willing to accept your terms as long as you’re happy with mine.” I straighten myself up, having finally had enough of him staring down my shirt.

“Whatever you want, darlin’, it’s yours. You take whatever you damn well please from me.  _ Whenever  _ you want to take.” He lays it on thick. The freaking thing is that I can imagine him being this control freak when he’s being the boss man, who has a kink for being dominated behind closed doors. I bet he just loves someone having their way with him, you know, to change things up.

_ God, you’re fucked up, Alex. This really isn’t something you should be thinking about. This can’t be healthy. Nobody else can constantly be thinking about such horrifically filthy things so often, can they? Of course they don’t you’re just a weirdo with a sinful mind. _

“If I win, I want you to hand over your jacket.” I speak as if I’m treading on eggshells - one wrong move, even a millimeter in the wrong place, and it’s all over. If he takes this the wrong or sees it as me getting above my station, I’ll have ruined the whole thing.

I watch him intensely as he takes a second to think about it. Almost straight away he chuckles and he’s obviously not going to reject what I’m asking of him. “I think that’s more than fair play.” He declares his opinion on the matter at hand. “Win and the jackets yours.” Negan confirms what he’s going to give me when he gets beaten. And it  _ will  _ be mine because there’s no doubt going to win (although it might be the drink talking by now). He doesn’t know it yet, but it’s going to happen. I don’t care how much it humiliates him, after the amount of embarrassment he’s already put me through today, he deserves it and more.

“Alright then.” I go to untie the knot of my short sleeves shirt from around my waist. I bunch the material up in my hands and throw it over onto the sideway to the left of me. I’m hoping it works as a distraction, it has so far. “You’re on.”

I walk around to Negan’s end of the table, picking up the cues placed on top of it on my way past. I pass him the longer one and pick up the chalk cube before he has the chance. I rub the grove of the blue chalk over the end of the cue to buffer up it’s surface.

He chuckles to himself, I’m guessing at my seriousness about all of this. If that is in fact the case, then he has wildly underestimated how competitive I get. It stems from the years I spent in college. While most people go out on the town and get wasted most nights, I tried to make the least amount of friends possible. I don’t really like people, so instead I spent my time hanging out in the almost deserted pool clubs. I know I’m good at it. Unless Negan happens to secretly be a pool champion, of some sort, then he’s not going to beat me. His biggest downfall is automatically assuming that he’d better than everyone else at everything, simply because he has the upper hand.

“Does the best of 3 games sound fair to you?” Negan recommends that we should play more than one game. I can’t argue that, the best of 3 is indeed fair, but I’d be quite happy with just one game. It’s all I need to wipe the floor with him.

“Suits me.” I affirm with the flattest tone of voice I can muster up. It’s not worth arguing over with him. “You want to break first?” I ask the question as I set my cue aside, leaning up against the side of the table, freeing my hands up to set up the balls in the plastic triangle.  .

“I most certainly do not, it should  _ always _ be the lady first.” He steps back away from me slightly to give me some room. I find it amusing when he plays the gentleman. There’s nothing gentle about him at all. I shove my hand right into the of the opening where all the balls go when they’re released from inside of the table. He stands directly behind me as I lift the plastic triangle up, put it back into the hole where all of the balls just came from and make my way to the other end of the table.

I take the cue ball out of smaller hole at the other end of the table, I set it on the green material on the starting spot and rest the thinner end of cue in the crook of the L shape between my thumb and finger. “If you insist.” I say as I pull my cue back using my right hand to send the white ball forward and stun the rest of balls into splintering away from each other.

“Shit.” negan curses, clearly regretting letting me go first. Two striped balls instantly go into the pockets and it’s at this point he realises that he was wrong to automatically write off my chances of winning before waiting to see what I can do.

[[[]]]

We didn’t get to finish our third game by the time it got to that point in the day where Spencer decides to be an absolute twat. I swear he’d got it written down on his list of daily chores that he needs to do each day before he goes to sleep.

However, saying this, I would never have wished death upon him in quite the way Negan butchered him. I’m not convinced I’d wish that kind of death upon anyone. It wasn’t something any of us needed to see.

Negan killing Spencer was only the first load of shit to hit the fan; another two load got thrown on following that very one sided altercation. After emptying the contents of Spencer’s insides onto the floor, the second load of shit came when Rosita fired a gun at Negan and missed. She ended up firing a bullet straight into Lucile’s wooden surface and Negan went absolutely bat shirt crazy. And that shit storm was what caused the third load of shit to fall as a result of multiple people lying to him about who was responsible for making the bullet. Then to top it all off, Rick somehow managed to make this situation even  _ worse _ by turning up in the middle of it all.

As soon as he sees me, panic flashed across my brother’s eyes and not to mention how utterly confused he looks by trying to process the concept of me playing pool with his sworn nemesis. I’ve not got my head fully wrapped around the idea either. While myself and Negan knew I’m only a few turns away from winning both this games and the best of 3 series, this little interruption in play has ruined any chances I had of deflowering him by taking his jacket.

“Alexus...?” Rick sounds like he was going to ask me a question but his voice drops off once he realises there’s nothing to say. He can’t say anything to me that’s going to fix this or make it any better. Rick looks straight through Negan, which is something the our leather clad overlord isn’t going to like. Not one little bit.

“Oh, that’s right! Alexus here is your kid sister.” Instead of losing his shit with Rick for looking through him as if he weren’t there, he decides to play to psychological warfare card. The one where he bullies him in an attempt to break him. “How come you never told your had a sister, Rick? I mean, man, she is an absolute  _ delight _ ! Not to mention that she is  _ hot _ .” He gets all up in Rick’s face, as close he can get. It’s an unsettling sight to have to watch, god only knows how uncomfortable Rick must be feeling right now. He probably wants to break Negan’s jaw. I wouldn’t blame him either.

I closely watch the interaction between the two of them. Rick shoots daggers at Negan; so much so that if looks could kill, he’d be dead 10 times over.

Everyone else who’s stood around as they observe what’s going on in front of them is scared shitless. They’re worried about who Negan is going to kill next. Am I worried about who he’s going to claim as his next victim? Well, I’m more on edge at the prospect of Negan getting the satisfaction of really putting the final nail in the coffin for Rick by bragging about fucking me. Until now, I hadn’t thought about the logistics of keeping something like that from my brother. I was boliderant to think he wasn’t going to find out. All I know right now is that if Negan leaves here having not brought up out little spot of ‘romance’ then I’m sure as hell not going to go out of my way to tell Rick what happened. It’s almost as bad as telling your best friend you slept with their boyfriend.

“Careful how you’re looking at me, Rick.” Negan takes a dislike to the threatening look Rick gave him for talking about me in such a sexually objective way. Rick physically tenses up; I think anyone does at how threatening our new dictator sounds, we all know just how serious he is. Rick eyes jet over to mine as he looks for something to focus on to stop him from lashing out at Negan. I always have been one to help him keep a level head, where I’ve been able to. I lock eyes with him and lightly shake my head from side to side, negan has his back to me by this point so he can’t see any movements I make.

The next thing that happens is Negan leans forward to whisper something directly into Rick’s ear so nobody else hear what he says. All the while, I see Rick repeatedly clench and unclench his fist, not looking away from me for even a second.

Negan must have told him.

The panic kicks in and my heart starts beating so loud I can hear it thudding in my ear drums, my breath becomes erratic and that’s probably my least favorite part. I wish more than anything I could control these irrational things that my body does. It would be way less embarrassing.

Seeing what’s happening to me, Rick makes a very dangerous move by pushing straight past Negan without considering, or caring, what he’s going to do him as punishment. Rick grabs my shoulder, makes me look at only him and he slows his breathing down intentionally to give me a pattern to match my own breaths to. This always has been the protocol for the panic attacks, ever since I was about 10. Sometimes they last no more than 30 second, sometime it’s for a full period of 10 minutes, there’s really no way of telling which it’s going to be. I’ll admit that half the reason this happening is because of the way Rick was looking at me just now. I couldn’t tell whether he was mad at me or mad at Negan, but him rushing over to help me like this proves it was the latter. Maybe Negan didn’t tell him, maybe he was threatening him with something else, but there’s so much uncertainty, so many ‘yeah but what if’s’ going around inside my head.

“What the fuck?” Negan demands as soon as his single track mind catches up with what just happened. His ego took such a hit it must have dazed him for a second or two. “Who the  _ hell _ do you think you are?!” Negan shouts again as he angrily whips himself around to face us. He doesn’t show any remorse to the situation at hand at all. He violently jerks Rick off me by ripping his shoulder back from his body with so much force I’ll be surprised if it wasn’t dislocated in the process. He constantly switches between looking at myself and my brother, who isn’t rising to it. He knows throwing punches or retaliating further would result in nothing more than an even higher body count.

Negan’s chest is heaving, not being in control of everything tiny little thing really gets to him. What he fails to see is that he still  _ is  _ in control. Just because his grasp has slipped slightly doesn’t mean that he’s lost it completely. Yet, he reacts in such an extreme way. Making note of things like this about him is important, we can use his weakness against him.

“What’s wrong with you?” Negan looks to me to shed some light for him, but I’m probably the last person to be doing that right now. I don’t feel like a rabbit caught in the headlights, I feel like the car has already hit me. I try talking, explaining myself, but nothing comes out. Only gasping noises.

“Is she asthmatic? If somebody doesn’t grow a set of balls and speak up soon, you sorry shits are going to pay for it!” Negan opens the floor up to anyone who’ll give him an answer, even he is looking at Rick the entire time he speaks. Negan talking to me, sounding pretty worried about it and having everyone standing around watching me only makes me feel 100 times worse.

“She’s having a panic attack.” Rick answers his question and nothing more. “You need to let me help her.” He adds as he notices me not getting better. As much as I’ve never found out what happens if I can’t calm myself down, I’m not keen on finding out the answer, especially not with an audience watching.

Negan stands silently for a second as he considers the different ways he can play this. Eventually he steps aside to let Rick past. Rick continues trying to get my heart and breathing back down to normal. At the same time as me and rick trying to see this little episode through, Negan goes back to addressing the issue of finding out who made the bullet. My money's on Eugene, then again, I’m sure everyone’s would be if money still meant something. There seems to be something intentional about the way Negan is directing all the attention back to himself. Or it might just be that he likes everything to be about him. I need to stop looking too far into things. He doesn’t care. Why should he?

By the time I’ve firmly got my shit back together, which didn’t take too long, Negan finally wore down Eugene and got him to spill the beans. He always has been weak. Rick does some final checks with me that I’m okay before he even thinks about walking away from me to go back to his dirty looks tennis match with Negan.

“Well Rick, as much as I’ve had a splendid time at this fine place you have here, I best be on my way back.” He turns to start on his way out. He stops after a few steps and back tracks to stand directly between Rick and I. “And, by the way, I’m going to be taking your bullet making nerd with me.” He addresses Rick and then goes to turn around and make his way to stand towering over me. He leans down and puts his cheek right up next to mine.

“You’ll have to come see me sometime.” Negan whispers direction into my ear, so closely that I can literally feel that charismatic smile on his face. “Because I would be  _ mighty _ upset if I didn’t get to see you again.” His voice sends shivers down my back and they’re not the good kind either.

I decide to play him at his own game, I put my hand to the back of his head to bring him down to the height I need him to be at for my short ass to be able to whisper directly into his ear. “You should just consider yourself lucky that this shit storm went down before I had the chance to beat you. It would have been embarrassing to take your jacket off of you in front of all these people.” I pull my face away from the side of his and make sure to get a good look at his him as I do so.

It’s not the reaction I was expecting him to exhibit. His face is a mixture between amusement and something that looks like pain. He’s smiling like an idiot.

“Seriously,” he says, not bothering to whisper anymore. “ Come and see me sometime. I like you, Alexus.” He beams me a flash of his twisted smile. With that, he turns his back on me and swans his way his way on out of our home.

[[[]]]


	3. || You just have to take it

Negan’s sobering visit has been playing over and over in my head in the time since he came and left, in a similar way to a hurricane. That all kicked off 2 days short of a week ago and it’s safe to say that most people still haven’t quite recovered. It was a lot to take in. Many people have been walking around with their heads down in an attempt to talk to other people as little as they possibly can. Rick spent a good few days completely avoiding everyone and, with the way his dad was acting, it took a great effort to convince Carl that he wasn’t to blame for what went down. 

Admittedly, it wasn’t easy for me to do because I did blame him for some of it, but when you love someone you put yourself through difficulty to protect them. Even if it means putting your own feelings aside for a while to heal someone else’s. That what love is. It’s a sacrifice. 

“Do you think we’ll ever get that clean?” Tara makes a morbid comment about the blood stain left on the road where Spencer laid bleeding out after Negan butchered him. His body was still lying there the next morning. Rosita was, of course, the one to step up and piece him back together so she could dig a grave and put him in it. I’m sure somebody would have done it eventually, it’s just that she was the only one that really cared about him enough, as sad as that may be. Despite everyone’s best efforts, and a shit load of bleach, nobody was quite able to lift the stain from the tarmac. 

“Maybe one day.” I mumble, almost inaudibly, as I pick at the skin around my finger nails. With so much threat and danger lurking around at the moment I feel like I should be out doing something to help the tight situation we’re in. Like I should be out looking for food or weapons, not sitting around like I’m waiting for something interesting to happen.

“So...when are we going to talk about it?” She asks the one question I knew was going to come up at some point. I really didn’t want her to, but no amount of wishing she wouldn’t is going to stop her. 

“We’re never going to talk about it because there’s nothing to talk about.” I try sounding as stern as I can. And I that, there’s nothing for us to talk about. Negan did not rape me. That’s the bottom line, there’s no more to it than that. If he did rape me, then there would be something to talk about, but he didn’t. 

“Don’t give me that. You’ve been acting weird since. You’ve hardly said a word all day, that’s not like you at all. The hard part is usually trying to get you to shut up, not trying to squeeze conversation out of you.” Tara tells me something I’m already more than aware of. I know I’ve not been talking much, but then again neither has anyone. Everyone has been quiet. It’s not like I’m the only one keeping a low profile at the moment. She’s just being paranoid. She knows what happened, she doesn’t know how it happened or the reason why I did it. 

The fact that she found out was unfortunate, I never wanted anyone to know. Her being like this with me doesn’t help with me already needing to constantly walking on eggshells around Rick. I don’t know what he knows and it’s starting to cause some serious issues. If he knows, he hasn’t mentioned it. I can’t be sure if he’s not said anything because he doesn’t know or if it’s because he simply doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s not something I can bring up without me being 100% sure that he knows me and Negan had sex. If he doesn’t know then I want to preserve that as far as I can, it would only be yet another level of complexity that nobody should have to deal with.

“Nobody has been particularly bursting with conversation. Nobody is happy about it.” I pull the petals of a flower I picked out of the grass one at a time. It’s the perfect kind of afternoon to be sitting around and eating ice cream, it’s just a shame nobody has any. 

“Yeah? Need I remind you that nobody else fucked Negan. You know, that guy that’s ruining our lives.” Tara raises her voice in a slight emotional outburst at me not telling her what she wants to hear from me. She wants to know what really happened and I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to have to say a single word about it. Not to mention that her letting everyone within earshot know what I did encourages me even less to talk to her. 

“Would you keep your damn voice down? That’s my business you’re preaching to everyone.” I stress that this isn’t something she gets to tell to whoever she feels like. Carl was physically in the middle of it and even he didn’t have the right to go telling Eric about it. My decisions are my business and I shouldn’t be questioned left, right and centre about them by people who don’t understand why I did what I did. Tara normally at least tries to understand people, but this time she’s not having any of it. 

“Rick is going to find out at some point. That’s if he doesn’t already know.” She says exactly the same thing the annoying, anxious voice inside my head has been telling me, that it won’t let me forget. “Whether he raped you or not, you still had sex with him.” Tara states a fact that can’t be argued with. “That’s something Rick needs to know about. It’s also something you need to talk about.” She insists on something she couldn’t be more wrong about. 

I don’t need to do anything. I don’t need to tell my brother. I don’t need to talk about it. 

“If he doesn’t know, then marvelous, fucking great in fact. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” I strongly put across. “As much as I love you and appreciate you giving a shit about me, I am not going to discuss this with you. It’s not something I need to talk about. I’m fine.” I persist. I throw the now very dead flower out in front of me and stand up, taking the care to brush and dust and dirt off my ass in the process. 

I turn to walk away without saying anymore, but she stops me from storming off. She grabs a hold of my wrist in a tight grip. A grip that I’d punch anyone else for trying to grab me with. 

“Be pissed off with me all you want, the offer if still there. Whenever you need me, I’ll be here. You know that.” She says her peace and then lets me go without keeping me any longer. She’s good like that. When somebody wants to go, she always lets them go. It does kind of nullify the point that she was the one who caused the upset in the first place. 

“Thanks.” I murmur. I walk away and leave her sitting there on her own. 

[[[]]]

Seeing as Rick’s reasoning for not letting me out of Alexandria was to stop Negan from finding out he had a sister, I’ve decided that leaving no longer requires me asking for his permission. I would normally ask Tara for any favour that I need, but this is one that she would never agree to and that doesn’t leave me with many options. 

The bottom line is that I need to speak to Negan and I don’t know how to get to the place where he lives. The only person that does is Daryl. The problem with that is that he’s not here, he’s at the Hilltop. He’s not safe there, but he is safer than he would be here. This is the first place the saviours are going to come looking when they discover that he’s pulled off the great escape. Lucky for me, I do know how to get to the Hilltop where Daryl, Maggie and Sasha are. I’m going to ask Daryl to help me out because that’s the only way I’m going to acheive what I need to. Given different circumstance I could most likely have asked him to take me there, but with him having been captive there and having a massive target on his head, I could never ask him to risk so much. 

I’m struggling to even comprehend the concept that I’m thinking about galavanting all the way over to the Sanctuary on my own. I can’t do something like that. At least not with something going wrong in the process. It seems like a good idea in theory, as with most things. It’s the part of actually going through with it that’s the difficult part. I build things up in my imagination till the point where I’ve convinced myself that everything which could go wrong will go wrong. This happens regardless of how much I want to do something. I always talk myself out of it. 

I did, however, successfully manage to slip out of Alexandria without anyone noticing me leaving, I don’t think anyone saw me anyway. Even if somebody did, I’m grateful for them not trying to stop me. I guess that comes with the status of being Rick’s sister, people kind of let me do what I want. 

Aside from getting out without any issues, that’s the only thing that has gone according to plan. I allowed myself 2 hours to make it to the Hilltop and it’s already been that long since I left and I’m nowhere near close yet. It means I’ve either severely lost or I massively underestimated the time I would take me to get there on foot. I really hope it’s the latter rather than the former. 

Despite my slight fuck up in getting my timing all wrong, I did arrive at the Hilltop alive and with all my limbs still intact. The long time residents of the community were weary of letting me into their home. It wasn’t until the likes of Maggie and Daryl heard my name that they opened the gates to let me in. I earned hugs from all 3 of them that knew me, as well as a 4th one from Enid, who I wasn’t expecting to be there. It just goes to show that I need to pay more attention to things. 

We stand around in a small huddle. We wait for the very noise gates to squeal shut behind me before anyone attempts to say anything. Their voices would only be drowned out by the hideous noise of metal on metal. 

“Is everything alright with everyone in Alexandria?” Maggie automatically goes to check I’m not hever because something has gone wrong over there. I don’t blame her for thinking that Rick sent me because he was already too busy with something else to come himself. I’m sure they also still assume that Rick has me on lockdown, they have no way of knowing that I’d been introduced to Negan. With all the things that have happened recently, I highly doubt my meeting with him is on the agenda of things to talk about. 

“Everyone is as fine as they can be given the circumstances.” I answer her question. I consider going into telling them why I’m here, but I’m sure that’s another question that will come up sooner or later. I should probably wait until I have a moment alone with Daryl before I go getting ahead of myself anyway. My plan of talking to Negan all banks on Daryl being willing to help me. I also need to check that he’s not going to go ratting me out to Rick, I know how close those two are. 

“How’re you holding up?” Daryl never fails to prove himself as the tough guy, that would kick anyone’s ass in a fist fight, who has a heart full of gold. Talking of fights, I would love to see a punch up between him and Negan. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see Daryl beat up the guy who had him tortured 6 ways to Sunday. Personally, I think everyone would love to see that. 

“Rick said Negan tore the place up.” Sasha adds for extra reference. I notice Enid standing back from all of this and taking it all in. 

“He did. I didn’t realise he had such a repulsive personality.” I purposely leave his looks out of that one. I don’t want to lie more than I already am. I wish he looked as ugly as his personality is, it would be much easier to hate him that way. And, my god, I want to hate him. It upsets me that he is physically attractive. 

God damn it. Stop it, Alex. You’re doing it again. You promised yourself you were going to stop doing this. You’re going to get yourself in some serious trouble if you don’t pack it in. 

“Rick never said you finally met him.” Daryl is the first one to pick up on it. I had a feeling he would be; he’s probably the only one who cares enough to notice. 

“I guess it wasn’t important.” I attempt to direct the attention away from myself. I can’t say it’s a topic that I want to be questioned on. They’ll only start delving into details that nobody wants to hear me talk about.

“You were the only good thing left he didn’t know about. Now he does. That seems like something worth mentioning to me.” Maggie disagrees with me. Her statement only makes my current predicament even worse than it already is. Rick being reservist like that isn’t a good sign. “You and Judith all in the same day.” Maggie mentions under her breath, talking more to herself than he is anyone else. “As if he didn’t have enough to hurt us wit already.” 

As much as myself, Carl and Judith are the ones with massive red targets on our backs for being related to Rick, he’s the one that everyone is worried about. Say I get killed, that’s only one person dead. The backlash of what that would do to Rick is much greater because if Rick loses his marbles so does everyone else. It’s not just me that would have to get killed, everyone in Alexandria would lose their leader, things would start falling apart at the seams and many people would wind up dead. My life is much less important than the lives of so so many others. 

[[[]]]

“So, what did you really come here for?” Daryl asks as we walk through the cool air of the night towards the smaller of the 2 campfires set up here. We could have used the bigger one if we really wanted to, but we figured we’d use the small, more hidden one so we don’t disturb anyone. I was supposed to be spending the night sleeping on the sofa in Daryl’s temporary room, but I couldn’t sleep. No matter how hard I tried. I was on my way out to walk if off when Daryl announced I’d woken him up and he was going to join me. In reality, I didn’t stand much of a chance sneaking past a hunter like him. I bet his trained ears could hear a pin drop from 50 meters away. 

“You had my card marked as soon as I got here, didn’t you?” I know him well enough by now. He’s one of the very few of us still left from the start of it all, when we thought we would wait for it all to go away while we camped a little while outside of Atlanta. The memory comes as a painful, as with most others. 

“Damn right I did. You can’t hide shit. Eyeballing me every 5 seconds. It’s obvious you ain’t here because ‘you wanted to get out of Alexandria for a couple days’.” Daryl confirms my suspicions that he saw straight through my bullshit from the second I got here. “The only reason nobody else knows you’re lying is because they don’t know enough about that anxiety of yours. The nail biting and fidgeting - the telltale signs.” Daryl talks about one of the many late night conversations we’ve had sat cross-legged on either his bed or mine. One of those nights I told him about all the things wrong with my brain. 

I don’t know what possessed my to open up to him that night. The things we do late at night aren’t the same things we’d let ourselves do in the middle of the day. For some reason, being up in the dead of night, rattling around in the early hours of the morning, makes us very different people and nobody knows the reason why. We become very lonely and think about all the things wrong with our lives. The people we’ve lost, the things we wish we had the power to change, the things we don’t like about ourselves.

I chuckle to myself slightly at him managing to be so considerate yet so dismissive sounding all in the same sentence. I’m sure he doesn’t mean to come across so grumpy. It’s just the way he is and after spending the best part of the last few weeks being caged against his will, he has every right to behave the way he is right now. In fact, I’d be worried if he wasn’t. 

“I actually came here to ask a favour of you.” I provide him with the real reason why I rocked up here without any warning, it was going to have to come out at some point. I was planning on asking him in the morning before going off to share breakfast with the others. Apparently Maggie acquired some pop tarts and I’m certainly not missing out on an opportunity like that. I wouldn’t share them if I’d have found/been given them. 

“Yeah? What’s that?” Daryl straight away goes about finding out what I want from him. He doesn’t mess around, he always gets down to business without any beating around the bush at all. He hands he the flashlight he was holding and takes his lighter out of his pocket. I shine the beam of light over the fire pit so he can see what he’s doing more easily. To start the fire he picks up a dry piece of dark, lights it with the flame and then throws it into the centre of all the other blackened logs and planks. “You better not need another softball bat. That one was difficult enough to find.” He jokes, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly for the briefest of seconds, almost as if he forgot he’s allowed to not be sad.

“No, no, I’m fine on that score.” I assure him, tapping the sporting equipment that’s hanging from my belt, which I have to admit counteracts the point of wearing a belt by dragging my pants down with the added weight. I tied it on there with the same strand of string I used to tie it to my rucksack when I walked here. While it’s not practical for situations where I need a weapon instantly, I don’t feel like I’m going to be attacked inside the Hilltop walls. “I’m actually here to ask you to do something you’re most likely not going to want to.” 

“But you’re going to ask me anyway.” Daryl tells me more than he asks. He sinks down into one of the camping chairs that have been placed around to create a makeshift seating area around the bonfire. 

I untie the string holding my bat to my hip so it’s not uncomfortable when I sit down. I decide to sit myself down in the more sturdy looking seat to the right of Daryl, putting him on my left. I set my bat down with the larger end on the ground as to lean it up against the side of the chair. 

“Trust me, I don’t want to. I kind of have to.” I explain how this is a tricky situation. It’s not as simple as me asking him to do something for my own benefit. I’m doing this because I don’t want things to go wrong in the way I can see them heading. I need to know what Negan said to Rick; I need to know what he knows, or what he doesn’t know. 

“You ain’t got to do anything, Alex.” He huffs. He stretches his hand out and I pass his flashlight back over to him. His comment doesn’t do anything to help the conversation move forward, which only makes the situation even more awkward than I thought it could get for me. “So what’s this favour you keep talking about, that you haven’t actually told me what it is yet?” 

“I need directions to The Sanctuary.” I say as plain and simply as I can. As soon as the words pass my lips, I feel like a complete for even mentioning that place in front of him. It’s so soon as well, the wounds are still fresh. 

“And what the hell do you need to go there for?” Daryl barks as the annoyance in his voice becomes increasingly more evident. Him being pissed off with you is not a position anyone wants to find themselves in. I was prepared for him to be unwilling to help me, I’m not sure if I was prepared for him to get mad about it so much. 

“I can’t say.” I answer, an obvious lie. I could tell him by all means. It’s more the matter of the fact that I can’t stress how much I don’t want to tell him enough. There aren’t enough hours in the day, nor enough words in the English language for me to accomplish that.

“Bullshit.” Daryl bark. He gets very angry very quickly. He was raised in a home full of violence and he never had anyone to teach him any different. “After everything you have told me, everything I’ve told you, and you’ve suddenly decided you have to keep something from me? Seriously?” I half expect him to get up and start pacing around like a lion trapped in a cage, but he doesn’t. He remains firmly seated in his chair. 

“I just...I don’t want to be too honest. I need your help and I feel like telling you the reason why is just going to hinder my chances of you helping me further.” I try getting through to him that it’s best he doesn’t know. I’m fighting an uphill battle here as it is. The more I tell Daryl that he doesn’t want to hear, regardless of how much he thinks he does, the more he’s going to resist. 

“Just tell me.” He remains convinced of his earlier stance that I should tell him. Clearly he didn’t listen to a damn word I just said to him. “I need to know I not throwing you into a suicide mission. Would you help me if I didn’t give you any explanation? If there was even the smallest part of you that was scared you wouldn’t come back? Because I sure as hell wouldn’t do that to you.” Daryl tells it how he sees it, which is more than fair enough. It gives me more understanding of how this must look to him. 

“Fine, but what’s said stays between us.” I caution because the sensitive information we’re going to discuss could cause untold damage to people I love. The amount of people who already know makes me uneasy in my own skin as it is. Telling Daryl adds to the chance of this becoming common knowledge. 

“Always does.” He assures that my secrets are always safe with him. Although, part of me feels like he might change his mind when he finds out what it is. Nothing in the world could prepare him for the bombshell I’m about to drop on him without any warning. It’s handy he’s already sitting down for this one. 

I cast my gaze over to him and he’s already looking dead at me. I fidget uncomfortably and turn my thumbs over each other as I pluck every fibre in my body together to go ahead with telling him this. 

“Alright, here goes nothing, I need the directions because I need to talk to Negan.” I spew out all in one very long sentence without so much as taking a breath. Not one. “Before he left Alexandria he said something to Rick that he didn’t tell anyone else and I need to know what he said.” I explain as much as I can whilst also skirting around all the juicy details. 

“Why do you need to know so bad? Just ask Rick.” Daryl tries skipping to an alternative, one that he should know isn’t possible because I wouldn’t be going through all this trouble if the solution was right in front of my nose like that. 

“Because if Rick doesn’t already know then me dropping myself in it is the most dumbass thing I can think of doing.” 

“If Rick doesn’t know what? Is there something you’re not telling me.” Daryl picks up on that smallest odd detail. Nothing gets past him. Nothing. It’s ridiculous. After the initial shock of having realised I’ve shot myself in the foot there, I find myself becoming more and more scared of the reaction I’m going to earn from him. He may have mellowed a fair bit in the last couple or so years, but he’s still a hot head sometimes. Some things never change. 

He looks away from me for a little while to watch the flames as the fire really starts to claw it’s way up through the interlocked branches, logs and sticks that have been built up into a structure that resembles a miniature teepee. He looks back at me before long and I take this as his signal for telling me to spit it out. 

“I..uhh... I had sex with Negan.” I confess, feeling like a teenager that’s being given shit for skipping class to sneak off to their boyfriend’s house to make out for hours on end. 

“You fucked him?” Daryl sputters, looking ready to pounce from his seat at any given second. Him going off on a tangent isn’t going to do any good for anyone. He can go hurt Negan and loose this shit all he wants, it’s not going to change a damn thing. “Of all the assholes you could have dropped your panties for? It really had to be him, did it?” Daryl goes completely off the rails without letting me get a word in. 

“Get a grip Daryl, it was more complicated than that.” I tell him whilst finding it difficult to stop my voice from cracking. I didn’t want to piss him off; it was never my intention. Despite the upset this is causing now, he would only have been more pissed off when he found out I lied to him. 

“More complicated? You crawled into bed with the same guy that’s going around stealing all our shit that keeps up alive, killing our friends and locked me up in a damn prison cell like a caged animal.” He goes through the courtesy of lecturing me like I’m some kind of slut. I’ll admit that it hurts to have him think I’d be willing to just to let any man into my pants, but I am partly to blame for this. If I would have said no, Negan wouldn’t have done any more about it. 

“I did it so Carl could take Judith away from the house without the bastard knowing about her, but you know what? There was no fucking point. He wound up getting his hands on her anyway.” I notice my voice starting to raise to a volume level which is probably a little too loud considering people are trying to sleep. I consciously lower my voice to a more acceptable level to keep myself in check - there’s no need for this to get messy.

“You’re not making any damn sense.” Daryl snaps. Him shouting back at me indicates he does have some kind of understanding of what I’m saying to him. The ‘I’m not making any sense’ being a defence mechanism of his, the one that’s trying to make him feel better about assuming this was nothing more than me wanting to get laid. 

“When Negan dragged Carl back to Alexandria, the first thing he did was look for Rick, so the first place he went looking for him was Rick’s house. I was there looking after Judith and when he arrived she was upstairs in her room. He asked if he could ‘screw’ me, as so charmingly put it, and I said yes to distract him while Carl sneaked upstairs and grabbed his sister to take her somewhere away from him.” I pause to look over and check that he’s still listening to me. “The first part of the plan worked. He didn’t notice Carl taking her out of the house, but that’s where the plan failed. He must have figured something was up when he went back downstairs and Carl wasn’t there.” I refrain from putting the blame on Carl for refusing to leave her with someone else and come back. Carl stayed with her and that’s how Negan found her. 

“What were you thinking, Al?” Daryl listens to my reasoning and then goes straight back to giving me a hard time about it. “It wasn’t worth taking that risk. I thought you were smarter than that.” 

“Is that right? You wouldn’t be saying this if it would have worked, would you?” I spit back with a fair amount of confidence. I know how much his ‘Little Ass Kicker’ means to him and I’m pretty sure keeping her safe is more valuable than keeping me safe. 

“I sure as hell would. You give that man and inch and he takes a foot from you. You shouldn’t have fueled his ego any more.” Daryl harshly shoots me down, yet again. 

“You can be a dick about this all you want, it’s not going to change a single thing. I’ve still fucked Negan and there’s nothing I, nor anyone else, can ever do to take that back.” I express exactly what I’m thinking, it’s not something I’ve made a habit of. “If you’re going to help me, then help me, if you’re not, then don’t. I’m done with this conversation.” I finish as I ready myself to leave.

He huffs loudly and then leans forward in his chair to put himself closer to me. “You’re going to do this with or without my help, that I already know. So, figures that me giving you directions means you’re not going to get yourself lost trying to get there.” Daryl thankfully opts for the more logical sounding option. It makes it quicker and safer for me. It also means I stand a much better chance of making it there in one piece. 

If anything, I’m more overwhelmed that Daryl cares about me more than he hates Negan. 

[[[]]]

The following morning was a productive one to say the least. By the time I’ve got myself out of bed, Daryl has already written out a brief set of instructions on how to get there and drawn out a very rough sketch of the floor plan from what he can remember from his time spent there as a prisoner. I was out of the Hilltop Community and well on my way to Sanctuary before it was even noon. I tried my hardest to slip away without anyone noticing me, but Daryl made sure to catch me before I disappeared. He warned me that if I wasn’t back within 3 days he was going to come looking for me. I don’t mind that, you can’t say any fairer, especially when I don’t plan on staying there for any more than a couple of hours. 

However, the only thing that went to plan was getting there. I found the place without any trouble, but that’s where things stopped working for me. When I reached the perimeter fence I discovered that I’m not as sneaky as I thought I was. I ended up being spotted by one of them before I wanted to. I figured I could have tried running from them, but I really don’t see the point in doing that. Running away would only make sneaking in more difficult than it was already going to be. Handing myself into them meant being fast tracked straight to Negan and that’s exactly what I wanted. I wouldn’t even need to go looking for him. 

I kicked up a bit of a fuss when they tried taking my weapon off me. They’ve already taken more than enough from me and they sure as shit don’t need to go taking any more. I don’t care whether they planned on giving it back or not. It’s mine. Negan must have told them to go easy on me if I ever turned up because they didn’t put up much of a fight in not letting me keep my stuff. 

After deciding I wasn’t much of a threat to them the men on watch at the time walked my through a series of halls inside the complex, where we eventually ended up standing outside a very ominous looking door. It’s got to be Negan’s room on the other side of it. Any other bedroom and they wouldn’t be making such a song and dance about it. 

“Go on then.” One of the men gruffs at me when I look at the pair of them standing behind me. He makes it sound like they expected me to know what they wanted me to do without telling me. I’m not a fucking mind reader despite what they think. 

I turn back around, stand closer to the door and hit the wood with my bare knuckles a good couple of times. While they don’t actually do the same in reality, the knocking sound echoes around my skull. Everyone on this side of the door is so quiet that the shuffling on the other side of it can be heard without any difficulty. Within a few seconds of time passing by, the door knob twists and the door swings open away from me and into the room. 

A stupid, involuntary grin lights up Negan’s face as soon as he seems me. He leans against the door frame so easily that he makes it look like it’s something he practices in his spare time. 

“Well..hello there. It’s fucking marvelous to see you here Alexus.” He beams, stepping aside to let me pass him into the room. I was so distracted by him that I didn’t even notice the my escorts disappear from being stood behind me. “You know, I didn’t believe you would actually go through with coming all the way here Miss Grimes.” I like the way he uses my full name to address me. It surprises me that he remembers what I’m called; I thought he would have forgotten all about me by now. I am a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due, so kudos to him for not treating me like trash. 

“You asked me to visit, so I did.” I state bluntly. I walk into the centre of the room and I really don’t know what to do with myself. In the uncertainty of how to conduct myself, I take a moment to survey the room around me. It’s nothing all that special. Sure, it’s better that how most people live here, but it’s certainly not as OTT as I thought his living quarters were going to be. There’s a four poster bed covered with jet black sheets, a set of draws to store clothes in, a leather sofa, some pictures of snakes hanging on the wall and another internal doorway that leads into an en suite bathroom. 

“Take a seat. Wherever you like.” Negan shuts the door and turns back to face me. “Jump on the bed if you want.” He jokes, although, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was being serious. He’s very much a down-to-business guy, who I bet is still a child at heart. I might be entirely wrong, but that how he strikes me. 

I look between the sofa he has and the bed to weigh up which one is the better option for me to sit on. I know I’m analysing the decision way, way more than I need to be. I track my way over to his bed, thrown my stuff onto it and perch myself on the end of it. Opting to sit on the sofa seemed a bit standoffish to me and that’s not the way I want to come across if I stand a chance of getting what I want from him. 

He stands with his back against the door he just closed and we both take a sustained moment to observe one another. I can feel his eyes burning into the side of my head as he can now see all the many ear piercings I have that he’s only just been able to notice with this being the first time he’s seen me with my hair tied back; I get the same reaction from everyone. I, on the other hand, am struggling to deal with how chilled he looks. He’s currently modelling a pair of black slack fitting jeans, a plain white t-shirt and that’s about it. He’s not wearing his jacket and he’s not even wearing a pair of socks. 

He swaggers his way over to me, his feet making ever so slight slapping sounds as his bare skin makes contact with the concrete floor that runs throughout. “Mind if I join you?” Negan gestures to the unoccupied blank space beside me. 

“Not at all.” My voice monotone in my reply. I can’t see why he asked me that, it’s his bed after all, who am I to stop him from sitting on his own bed? It’s not like he’s someone to ask for other people's’ permission when he wants to do something, normally he just goes ahead and does it. “I mean, it’s your bed.” 

I don’t know why I’m bothering to try and get along with him. Regardless of literally anything else in this godforsaken universe, Negan is never going to able to take back any of the bad things he’s done. He can put himself up on a pedestal all he wants, he’s still a murderer. And while I understand that many people are murderers in this new era of humankind, my brother included, most people kill because they have no other option. Negan didn’t need to kill Abraham or Glen. He made the executive decision to kill them in a situation that wasn’t the last case scenario. 

“That doesn’t mean you’re okay with me sitting so close to you.” Negan makes a somewhat related comment as he sinks down into the mattress besides me at the foot of his bed. He leaves about a six inch gap between his shoulder and mine. “You see, because you have every reason under the sun to hate my guts, I can’t think of a logical reason why you would, one, come all this way to talk to me and, two, how you would be comfortable sitting this damn close to me after everything I’ve done to you and your people.” He’s trying to get to the reason as to why I’m here. Making it sound like he’s interested in finding out more about what makes me tick isn’t fooling me one little bit. 

“Hating someone doesn’t mean I don’t need something from them.” I keep my words to the bare minimum. Talking too much established personal connections that I don’t want to have with him, nor do I want him to go thinking I want to have such connections with him, because I don’t. 

“You need something from me? Now, this could get interesting.” He perks up a bit, him beginning to be unable to stop the corners of his mouth twisting up to form the starting stages of a smirk.

“I need to know what you said to Rick where you were at Alexandria.” I cut out any chit chat and get straight down to it. I already feel like I’ve been here longer than I should have been. 

“Any why is it so important that you know?” The question itself is serious, but the expression on his face doesn’t quite match up with it. I don’t know how he can find this even slightly amusing. There’s really nothing funny about it. Say the tables were turned, and he came to me for something he needed, even after everything he has done to me, I wouldn’t be smiling about it. 

“Because I don’t like being in a position where I don’t know what I can and can’t talk about around my own brother.” I tell him, knowing that I’m going to need to expand on this in extra detail if I want him to understand what I’m blathering on about. “If you told him you fucked me then he’s simply choosing not to talk about it. If you didn’t tell him that at all and told him something different, then it’s only a matter of time before I can’t keep it a secret from him any longer.” I explain, starting to feel like I was running out of oxygen at the end of that.

“You came all the way here just to find that out?” Negan expresses genuine disbelief at the concept of it. I appreciate it does sound a little OTT, I just never thought it was that crazy of an idea. 

“Yeah.” I don’t need to give him any more satisfaction. He already knows I let panic attacks get the better of me, which means he already knows more about me than I’m comfortable with, I don’t need to say about more about it to him - he can work that much out on his own. 

“Shit. Well, now I feel bad about causing you so much distress.” He at least sounds like he means it. I look over at him, which turns out to be a mistake because it makes me ten times more awkward to find him already looking at me. 

This is really starting to freak me out. This is not the same Negan I was first introduced to. The freaky part is that he’s one person who seemingly has 2 very different attitudes. The first one doesn’t care and the second one comes across as human, which is something the first one didn’t. 

“I mean that.” He insists, holding himself from touching me in anyway, even in an innocent way like resting his hand on my shoulder. “I am not an unreasonable person. I know there isn’t a bone in your whole damn body that believes me, but I want you to know that I would never take purposely take advantage of someone like that.” 

I can’t tell whether he means it or if he’s trying to butter me up. 

“You still never answered my question.” I remind him with a painful smile. I change the subject to avoid this turning into a deep conversation that I not willing to have. I don’t enjoy discussing what is or isn’t wrong with my brain. My mental health is my business and I’ve been fine up until this point without needing help from strangers who pretend they’re trying to help me out. It’s personal shit and he doesn’t need to know. 

He smiles to himself before telling me what I came here to get out of him. “If Rick knows we boned, he didn’t hear it from me.” He doesn’t stop looking at me. While Negan is a lot of things, he isn’t a liar, give anyone enough time and they would be able to work that out about him. He said he was going to kill one of us and he did. He said he was going to take our shit and he did. He’s a no nonsense kinda guy and people like that are always, always true to their word. No matter how much of a shit storm it causes, they always stand by their word. He doesn’t stand for bullshit from other people and he doesn’t go around dishing it out either. It’s a pretty sweet system. 

“You know, I’m still not sure that’s the answer I wanted to hear.” I express, breaking my own rule of not engaging in small talk. It’s okay though, I can talk to a mad man without being suckerd into his ways of trying to charm me. I know how this works. 

“That’s nothing to worry about. You haven’t always got to know.” Negan goes for the reassuring tactic in getting me to like him. “In exactly the same way as you never know how jumping ship and coming to live here could work out for you.” 

I scoff at the sheer stupidity of him thinking there’s even a sliver of a chance that I would betray every single person I care about. They would literally never forgive me for doing something as awful as that. Especially not Carl, good lord, that boy could hold a grudge until his dying breath. 

“Not a chance.” I provide my answer to his invitation before he has any time to try convincing me to join his cult. It’s not going to happen. Not in this life or the next. “With all due respect, I would never ever come to live here.” I make it as plain and obvious as I can, make it easy for him. 

“You could have whatever you wanted, Alexus. You wouldn’t have to lift a finger and that’s a promise.” He locks eyes with me, very much on purpose, and it only makes everything all the more awkward than it needs to be. 

“And I mean what I said; I would never come to live here. I already have everything I need back in Alexandria.” I tell him, even if it does sound a little bit stupid with him being the one who’s take everything good from our community. He’d have to be a complete idiot to believe me, he knows he’s taken all the food and weapons we need. 

“You wouldn’t have to settle for the things you need here, you could have anything you want. Negan leans even closer to me, but I don’t back away. More through sheer stupidity and sending him the wrong signals than anything else. Recoiling is the first thing he’d expect me to do, it might be interesting to see how he responds to me not reacting in the way he expected. “That’s what you have to do with the things you want.” He makes the move to rest his hand on my leg, which again, I’m too stupid to resist. “You just have to take it.”  
And he does exactly that, he kisses me as if I mean something more to him than just some girl he fucked. There’s really no other way of putting it than that. We didn’t make love, or whatever else you want to call it, we fucked. Making this move is emotional warfare, it’s seven shades of fucked up, even for him. 

I don’t move a single muscle the entire time his lips are in contact with mine. He must take the hint as he pulls back no longer than a few seconds later. He stares at me and I stare back at him. 

You already let the guy screw you. What difference does it make letting him kiss you? Nobody is going to find out either so it’s not like it’s going to hurt anyone. But, then again, what if somebody did find out? It would be the end of you, that’s what. Kissing him? That’s just a whole new world of troubles. You’re talking out of your ass again, you already fucked him remember? He’s gorgeous, you can’t deny that. Just stop worrying so much for once in your life and kiss him back. It doesn’t matter how much you know you shouldn’t, you know you want to. 

“Fuck it.” I speak out loud and don’t give anything a second’s worth more thought as I move forward and kiss him back. It would be rude not to. 

Negan shifts himself around so that one of his hands if one the bed next to my ass, causing the mattress to dip down, and so that his other hand moves ever so slightly from my thigh up to my hip. His lips unmistakably feel as if he’s smiling for the first few seconds, but that soon stop as he focuses on kissing instead. 

This is, by far, the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. Nothing has ever felt so wrong and so good at the same time. I know it’s cliche, but some of them are very true. I would have said so wrong, yet so right, but there’s nothing right about this. It’s 100% bad and that’s what makes it so good in so kind of fucked up, twisted way. 

So good that I can already tell I’m going to regret it.


	4. || All this and more

Just a little forewarning that this chapter is very NSFW. Read at your own discretion.

[[[]]]

Before anyone goes any further, with absolutely anything, I want to make it abundantly clear that I'm an idiot and I know it all too well. It's something I can't stress enough. I understand that everyone makes mistakes every now and then, but there really are only so many mistakes any one person can make within a short period of time before they officially become an idiot. I just so happened to have passed that set of criteria with flying colours.

I've been laid here for hours. Negan is lying next to me, spark out and dead to the world. There's clearly nothing that keeps him awake at night if he's able to sleep well knowing the sheer amount of death and misery that he's responsible for. He's laid on his back, his arm running out at a right angle to his body with my head resting on the inside of the his bicep. I don't particularly want to be in this position, but risking waking him up to get out of it simply isn't worth it. The situation leaves me with the only realistic option of laying here with nothing else better to do than dwell over all the many reasons why I should be feeling like a piece of shit right now. I'm sure it's more than enough to keep me busy until the morning so I don't find myself getting bored.

I take a small break away from my mind to look over at the disturbingly peaceful body sleeping next to me, Words could never express how weird it is to see him like this. It's unnatural to see him in a state of resting, it just doesn't seem right. I've already seen as much of him physically as there is to see and I can honestly say now, I don't think it's a sight I'll ever get bored of looking at. Please don't get what I'm saying confused with any misconceptions you may be having. Despite my shameful attraction to him, he's hardly your stereotypical supermodel with the perfect body. I don't want to say he's too old for that because that's not what I'm trying to get at. However, he's certainly older than he likes anyone to think he is. Then again, I'm not sure many people get to see his greying body hair so I'm not so sure that statement has any validity to it at all.

Another thought I can't shift is just how stupid of a move this has been on his part. Forget how stupid I have been in this and consider how easy it would be for me to sneak out of bed, grab my knife from my belt that's currently on the floor besides the bed and stab him in the neck. It would be too easy. The only reason I'm not doing that and ending his reign right now is because ending this conflict isn't as easy as killing him. For every bad guy you kill there is always another 5 people willing to take his place. If I put an end to him there are also too many outcomes of it for me to go acting impulsively. I can think this through and come back to murder him another time if that's what I decide to do. I could work on getting him to trust me, become Rick's woman on the inside and tear this place apart that way. I don't hold much hope for an alliance forming between the two of them so it looks like one of them is going to have to end up dead. It's a real shame because if they put their differences aside and put their powers together then they would be an unstoppable force of nature. It would never work. There are too many loopholes in that plan. Negan would want everything for himself and Rick wouldn't trust Negan. It would be like a dog chasing it's own tail.

In the dead silence of the middle of the night, I feel the the very first stages of a sneeze starting to make it's way to my nose and lungs. Of course my body decides to have an allergic fit to the dust in the air during the time I want to be making the least amount of noise possible. I pinch my nostrils shut in a last ditch attempt to stop myself from sneezing to no avail. I'm attacked by a small flurry of 3 sneezes to which I have still not perfected the womanly art of sneezing elegantly. I make a lot of noise and most definitely disturb Negan in the process.He stirs in his still very sleepy state of consciousness and it's not long before his eyes open and is looking around in the almost pitch black of the room.

"Have you been awake for long?" Negan sounds groggy, like he's got a cold or some other kind of sickness. He turns himself over onto his side without retracting his arm out from having my head resting on it.

"I haven't actually been to sleep yet." I tell him in the hope that he'll go back to sleep in the hope of deducing that I'm too tired to do anything else. I'm not all that exhausted at all, I only want him to think that I am.

"You should've woken me sooner." He makes it sound like it was the first thing I was supposed to do rather than spending my time staring at the ceiling.

"Waking you up wasn't going to help me sleep any better." I tell him that I fail to see any causality between him telling me to wake him up and my previous comment between not being able to sleep. I'm not sure whether he realises or not that he's not making a great deal of sense. Maybe it's because he's still half asleep and the neurones in his brain haven't been given enough time to warm up yet.

"No it wouldn't have helped you sleep." He confirms that I was right. "Waking me up would have given you someone to talk to." He makes a more coherent comment about the point he was trying to get across the first time.

"Talking isn't exactly my forté." I hint that even with him awake and available for me to talk to, I would most likely still rapidly run out of things to talk about. Small talk is one of those things that you're either good at or you're not. I'm one of the people in the 'not' category. I don't believe it's something I'll get any better at any time in the near future either.

"Have you not met me or something? I could talk about all sorts of fucking nonsense for fucking weeks on end. You wouldn't have to say anything." Negan kicks off the covers that were over his bottom half down to the end of the bed. This time he's not stark naked as he makes his way over to his cabinet and wardrobe. He stands in his briefs as he opens up his forementioned wardrobe and starts digging around in there. Surprisingly, he has more in there than a set of plain white t-shirts and the same dark pants that he always wears. He's got a variation of differently coloured shirt in there, a couple of pairs of jeans and even a pair of shorts. After sieving through the contents, he dresses himself in a plain black t-shirt and come checkered lounge pants; I'm guessing it's what he would usually sleep in?

"Put some clothes on Alexus, we're going on a little adventure." He encourages me to make myself at least half decent. I'm already wearing my t-shirt and some panties so I only need to bother with finding my self some bottoms. I get myself off the bed and lean down to pick up my battered skinny jeans from where I left them on the floor.

"Where are we going?" I ask, turning my jeans back inside the correct way to wear them and coincidentally shove my legs into the designated holes for them. I jump up and down to get them over my ass (it doesn't help get them on, it's just one of those things people do) with my bare feet making a slapping noise against the concrete as I do so.

"You really wanna go and ruin the surprise like that?" He asks me whilst I'm in the motions of doing up my fly and securing the buckle on my belt. He walks around to the side of the bed that I've sat back down on to make sure I don't fall over trying to get my shoes on. As I look down to pick up my trainers I see that Negan's not made any effort in putting anything on his feet so I'm going to make the assumption that I'm not going to need any either.

"I only want to know if it's the kind of adventure that requires wearing shoes or not?" I ask for a clarification on that part. Like I don't want to end up with broken glass in my foot or something nasty like that. If there's anything I dislike more than digging myself a hole and jumping into it with both feet, it's certainly got to be uncertainty. It's like not knowing something makes my brain itchy, that's really the best way of describing it.

"You don't need 'em. Even if you do, you're small enough, I'll carry you." He makes a statement that I can't be sure whether he's joking or if he means in. He's not lying about being able to carry me, he most certainly would be able to do that. Carrying me is something I would expect from a well established, long-term relationship, not from a pair of people that have boned a couple of times. He's such a charismatic person that it's really hard to tell if he's being serious about half the stuff he says.

"I'm heavier than I look by the way." I inform him before he goes putting his back out by underestimating my body mass. He says I'm small, but I'm not really. I'm not especially short not am I that skinny. I would say I'm more of a happy medium more than seeing myself at any end of the spectrum. It's his freakishly tall structure that makes everyone else seem shorter than they are, including me.

"Don't you worry about that. I'm stronger than I look." He comments, obviously not realising that he does look that menacing. You've got to have a substantial amount of muscle on your bones to be able to destroy someone's skull like he's done multiple time before. I don't have the physical build to be able to do something like that, not even while wielding a weapon like that monstrosity of a baseball bat he uses. "Now, come on." He makes his way over the the door leading out into the gloomy hallway and beckons for me to follow him out. "I've got something I'd like to show you." He doesn't give me much to go by, forcing me to have to put my faith in him when he really doesn't deserve it. He'd have to pull off nothing short of a miracle in order to get me to trust him. I don't care how much he likes to brag about being a man of his word.

"And what makes you think I want to see it?" At this point, a little bit of sarcasm isn't going to make anything any worse. Even if it does, it would give me a good excuse to jet off and run back home.

"Because it's a nice place I've got here and I want to show it off to you." He enlightens me as to what this midnight excursion is going to consist of. "No matter how many times you say no, I'm still going to keep asking you to stay here with me. Showing you around might help to change your mind."

I mill over him telling me this in my mind. I personally can't see myself being worth the effort he's wasting in trying to get me to side with him.

We walk down a sequence of different hallways and turnings with him leading the way and me following behind him. It's not a long walk, but it is lengthy enough for Negan to have enough time to bring up the conversation expressing that he wants to play our 3rd game of pool we never got around to playing last time he was in Alexandria. With us both having won a game a piece in the space of the first two games, the final game would have decided the winner. Not that it matters anyway, I'm already in this place without him needing to win. Although I have to admit winning his jacket would have been the highlight of my post-apocalyptic life.

After a good while of keeping quiet and listening to him talk about a mixture of all kinds of things, he finally passes me the baton on conversation by asking my a question that requires me to have to actually say something. "How did you get that good at playing pool anyway? You're fucking incredible."

I knew it was going to come up at some point. "I went to college in Dublin, Ireland. They had this little pub there I went to a lot. I made a friend by hanging around all the time and they taught me how to play. Spend that much time doing anything over and over again and you're going to get good at it." I tell him more about myself that I probably should for my own safety. Saying that, not many people knew I lived over there for 4 years, the only people that cared enough were my family. I didn't have many friends before I left and with no way of contacting anyone via internet anymore, I have no idea what happened to any of the friends I did make while I was across the pond. My best friend was one of the locals at that pub and I try not thinking about them as much as I can. I used to keep in contact with them online, but mobile phones soon became more than useless and the satellites practically fell out of the sky.

"So a pub is like a bar, right?" Negan looks for clarification.

"Yeah, exactly the same thing" I confirm.

"If you got into college abroad you must have some kind of super dooper smarts in that head of yours." Negan assumes as we walk out onto a metal walkway. It overlooks a massive open mess hall sort of area. "What did you major in?"

"They don't major in a subject, instead you focus on only one subject and get a degree in that one area. You can learn another language, but that's about it." I tell him about how the system works differently than the way it works here in most American universities.

"Then what degree do you have?" He amends his question.

I'm stuck between telling him the truth, telling him I specialised in psychopathology (basically the study of abnormality and mental illness) or make up something else that doesn't make him feel like I'm studying him all the time.

I take the latter option of telling him I got a degree in something else. "Animation. Drawing the cartoons and putting them into the computer programmes and learning how they work and all that kind of thing." I come up with something that should be highly believable considering the miniature world I've sharpied onto my softball bat. It's certainly a lot more believable than telling someone you got a Psychology degree when you're mentally unstable yourself.

"Now that is interesting." He stresses his words in the same fashion that's unique to the way he talks. "Ever work on any shows I'd know?" He presses on questioning me, keeping me on my toes. He takes a turn to the right, stopping momentarily to let me pass by to walk in front of him. I go on a decent down a set of stairs and stop at a platform half way down to where the steps change direction back the other way.

"No I didn't." I tell him as we reach the bottom of the stairs. "You could say the world ended before I got my big break." I reminisce for a second, thinking about all the things I don't miss from the old world. I don't miss the financial worries, the politics or the mundane repetition of having to do the same shit job every day just to make a living, to make sure I had enough money to live. Yes, the saviours have made things shit again, but at least I don't have to worry about things that really aren't worth worrying about. I'd rather have to worry about when I'm next going to eat rather than stressing about something stupid like how my hair looks. Thinking back to my shit job, I should have told my boss to go fuck himself when I had the chance. That guy was a massive asshole. I've since learnt that life is too short.

Seeing as I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, I hang back and let Negan take the lead again. He picks up on my intentions and steps forward to show me where to go. He steps right up to me and comfortably puts his arm around my shoulders and encourages me along with him.

"This is the main hall, but despite it's name this is barely the start of it my dear. We have so much more here, it would be a real shame if you didn't stay here and share it with me." Negan pretends to play nice and I'm not falling for a single word of it. "I really do want to work with your people, but your brother seems to want to make that as hard as possible for me." He keeps waffling on about stuff that I would have to be an imbecile to believe. He must think he's successfully pulling the wool over my eyes, or that I actually like him. Either way, he's being a pratt about it.

"What other stuff do you have here?" I ask trying my hardest to avoid any conversation about 'my people' or anyone that I care about. It's not something I want to talk about.

"If you would like to follow me, I will personally take you on the grand tour." Negan looks at me as if butter wouldn't melt and looks genuinely happy about it as well.

It's unsettling to say the least.

[[[]]]

Negan told me this place had a lot to offer and he wasn't lying about that part. Not one bit. We must have been walking around for hours while he showed me just about every room in the entire establishment. They have a massive kitchen, dining halls, laundry rooms, games rooms, an infirmary. Just about anything you can think of, they're sure to have one here somewhere.

It's actually rather remarkable how they've managed to build so much having started with so little. It's like having built an empire in the middle of a shitshow. It's more than anyone else has managed to create since we've had to build our back up from the very ground.

He may be an asshole, but he knows how to get shit done. It might not be the morally correct way of going about things, but it's worked none the less. If he wants something done, then it's simple. It gets done and that's the end of it. Credit where credit is due and all that, right?

"So, what do you think? I still can't tempt you to join the winning side?" Negan shatters the silence by asking me a question as we both lean up against the railings running the length of the metal walkway we stepped out onto earlier, the one around the top levels of the main hall area.

"I always have rooted for the underdog." I answer almost indirectly, also telling him the very thing he doesn't want to hear. Everyone has to be told no every now and then, no matter how big and bad they are or happen to think they are.

"But you could have all this and more. Can't you see that it's a win-win?" Negan really doesn't seemed to have grasped the concept that he's talking out of his ass. I'd end up losing more than I would gain. Somehow he's blind to that. I've not seen him cared for any loved one of his own and maybe that's the reason why, but it doesn't mean that he doesn't have the capacity to understand. If anything, he's probably the way he is because he's lost everyone he cares about. People who had nothing to start off with generally develop coping strategies for being on their own with going as bat shit crazy as he is. Take Daryl, for example, nobody ever gave a shit about him and love is something that he's able to understand.

"But those people back in Alexandria, even the ones I'm not related to by blood, are my family. I come here to stay with you and I'm dead to them. Yeah, I'd get loads of cool shit, but they not worth anything near what the people I care about do. Without them I don't have anything else to live for. I can't cut them off, not ever." I go into detail. Again, more than I probably should have. I'm starting to think he has this supernatural gift where he can coax people into telling him things with the persuasion of his mind.

"I knew you'd say that," he smiles gently, like he's done something to be proud of by predicting the correct (and most likely) response I was going to give. "You'd make a new family." He turns around so his back is leaning against the railings rather than his front. It gives him a better view of looking at my face while he's talking to me. I cross my arms and rest them over the top of the cool metal. "I can promise you would be treated like royalty around here, you wouldn't even have to earn it like everyone else does." He persists onwards with his sales pitch. It's starting to get a little old.

"While I respect the hospitality, there really is nothing you can say that's going to make me change my mind." I try and save him his wasted time. I don't want to have to listen to it for much longer either.

His face retains the same straight expression it has done for the majority of these early hours of the morning as he steps away from the banister. He stands stands directly behind me, completely still. The next thing I register is him moving closer and closer until his body is flush against my back. I feel him lower his head so that he can make contact between his lips and the right side of my neck. Having already discovered one of my points that drives me mad, he works on sucking the skin there. It's sad to admit that no amount of my will power is going to be able to stop me from enjoying it. I grip the banister with slightly more force and lean my head over away from him to make it easier to get at.

Catching me off-guard,Negan makes another bold move by taking his hand off my hip and slowly moving it round to my front and slides his hand into my pants, bypassing my underwear with ease. It's not something he's new to. He doesn't make any movement to start with - he keeps his fingers trained over the spot I want him the most.

"There's nothing I can say, maybe there's something I could do instead? Because I sure as hell know you're not getting this kind of treatment back at that so called Safe Zone." He talks lowly and in a low volume despite there being no one else even remotely near us to be able to hear anyway. He swiftly goes back to keeping his lips on my neck and starts working between my legs.

"Good fucking Lord." I curse, not quite prepared for what he's doing to me. For greater stability, I remove one of my hands from the railing in front of me and reach backwards to grip the wrist of his hand that's still very much on my hip. I push myself back into his crotch, only to earn being shoved back harder back into the cool metal structure in front of me. He doesn't play nicely with others and he doesn't seem to get off on me playing nicely with him either. He likes the challenge.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that saying the Lord's name in vain was a sin?" He talks directly into my ear again, the same way he did before.

"And you really think you're one to go around telling people about not sinning?" I push the words past my lips. "Personally..." I take a second to adjust and reposition myself, "I think you'd be better off focusing on what you're doing."

"Yes ma'am." Negan takes on board my request and sets about trying to make a success of the mission he taken upon himself. He takes full control as I allow myself to go completely slack and have Negan's body do all the work in keeping me standing. He makes a sequence of movements that involve him slipping his unengaged arm under my armpit and to grap the barrier in front of us as to support me better. He crooks his knees to press into the back of my own. His teeth make an appearance on my earlobe, having forgotten they're mainly fully of metal earrings and such. It wouldn'e be the first time someone's made that mistake.

"You know, not only would this place be yours, you could have me whenever you wanted. You don't need to tell me you hate me to you very core, I know that much already, but man you fucking love this don't you?" Although I've basically told him to shut up, he just can't help himself.

"What? So you can read minds as well now?" I confirm everything he said because he pretty much put the nail on the head. "And if you can help it, I'd really appreciate if you didn't delve into my deepest, most inner, complex thoughts at such an inconvenient time." It takes me longer to get my words out that usual, for very much obvious reasons. "God, you're such an asshole." I throw an insult at him as a wave of sensation that's usually soon followed by an orgasm makes it's way through my body.

"Oh don't give me that. Nobody forced you to come and see me." He make an argument that I'm not overly able to defend myself against. I probably still wouldn't be able to get out of it even if I had a lawyer with me. He adopts a very sly tone of voice that greatly compliments the upturned corners of his lips I can feel pressing into my neck just behind my ear. "Not that I'm complaining, of course." He moves as to give himself more leverage and slides his fingers inside of me and drags the wetness back up to when his attention was focused before as to use it as lubrication.

"Nobody forced me, no, but I've seen what happens when someone pisses you off and I like to think I'm not that stupid." I argue the nature of the situation to be forced not in my favour. I don't want him thinking I wanted to come all the way here to see him. I wouldn't be a smart move to let him think that.

Suddenly all politics of whether I wanted to see him or not, at an unconscious level or otherwise, dissolve away as he take the opportunity of me being distracted to put move his hand down, put his fingers inside of me and keep them there this time. He experiments with moving them around ever so slightly a few times until he gets them in exactly the same spot. I let out an involuntary moan and grip his wrist very tight. To say he's good at what he's doing would be an understatement. He must of had a lot of practice over the years.

"You can lie to me all you want, you know you can't lie to yourself, Alexus. I know you wanted to come because you're not the kind of girl who does anything she doesn't want to." Negan reads me like a bedtime story. His taunting is very bittersweet sensation: his voice is wonderfully delightful, but I don't like the way he sees through me so easily. It's frightening to think about just how many of my lies he's able to pick apart.

I try to fight back against the impending orgasm that's soon to make an appearance. I don't want to give him the satisfaction, but at this point it really has gone too far for me to be able to do anything about it. I can't wait much longer and it's not like I'd be able to stop it even if I wanted to. I help myself along by pushing myself further onto his hand.

"Oh, you're pushing your luck now." He addresses my action and it sounds like he's about to assert even more dominance over the interaction between the two of us."Are you really that desperate for it?" He makes it sound like I'm being told off like a child, like wanting to cum is something I should be punished for.

"Fuck you." I throw some shade back at him; getting brave for a second and forgetting who I'm talking to. This man has the power to take whatever he wants, destroy whatever he wants and here I am unsure of whether he likes me fighting back or not.

"You should fight back more often. It's one hell of a turn on." He assaults my senses by gibbering in my ear, pushing his prominent hard-on into my backside and rubbing my clit with his thumb. He knows it exactly what he needs to do and I orgasm right onto him.

The height of the pleasure surge is over in a small matter of seconds, riding itself into a slower come down. He holds me for a little while before setting me back down on my own two feet to support my own body weight once again.

"Think about it, I could make you cum like that every night if you lived here." Negan jumps straight into another reason why I should stay here without giving me any time to recover.

I turn around on the sport to face him and rest my back up against the barrier that he had me pinned up against just moments ago. I readjust my pants and look at him. He grins and pushes back a strand of his hair behind his ear that must have broken free from the constraints of his usually perfectly slicked back hair.

"Still can't convince you, huh?" He steps even closer and grasps the railings either side of me as to box me between his arms. He bites his lower lip and tilts his head slightly.

"Nothing is ever going to tempt me away from my family." I remain firm in the earlier stance I made, the one where nobody is going to change my mind about it. He could quite literally offer me the moon and the stars and I still wouldn't be interested. I've very stubborn and he's very strong willed - it's the same when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object.

"That's a damn shame. You know that?" He licks his lips and bends down as to hover his face a couple of centimeters from my own, the rise and fall of his breath causing little waves of hot air to hit my skin. His hand snakes it's way up to settle half on my face, half on my neck, a very tiny bit south of my ear.

"You're really laying it on thick." I make him aware that I know the game he's trying to play here. He pretends he wants more than a fuck buddy from me; I end up falling for his shit; it all then ending in a terrible mess of him breaking my heart because he never actually cared about me at all.

I'm not falling for it. I'm better than him and his messed up mind games.

"I'm a very decisive man. I know when I want something." He insists that he means what he's saying. Meanwhile, I don't believe him, not at all. Trust is something you have to earn and he's done nothing but prove he's a scumbag time and time again. "And I sure as shit would love to see your pretty face around here on a more permanent basis." He dips down and seals it with a kiss - this being the first time he's done that. The first time he's done something so intimate. He lets me take the lead to start with as he waits to see how I respond. Upon knowing that I accept his motion in kissing me, he puts some more weight onto me, putting himself back in charge.

I shove him back and he shoves me back even harder, exactly the same way he did before. His hand changes from resting on my neck to loosely wrapping his fingers into my hair. He tugs ever so lightly to tilt my head back to look up at him. He moves his tongue into my mouth without any prior warning and pulls himself away as he knows it's about to get heavy.

I'm left heaving for extra oxygen. He, on the other hand, knows exactly what he's doing. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, does that thing where he pokes the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his lips and smiles, but not fully. There's a not a doubt in my mind that he did that on purpose, kind of like a showcase of all the sexy things about him, the selling points he knows about himself. As if they could outweigh the terrible man he is.

"You're a jerk." I insult him for a 3rd time tonight, figuring that if he's going to let me do it twice, I'm most likely going to get away doing it a 3rd time as well. Might as well push my luck when I have the confidence to do it because I won't have for very long.

"Did you really think I got this far by being a nice guy?" He steps away from me and gives me the space I need to breathe.

"No, but I've certainly not done anything to deserve this." I point out that he's got no reason for being so damn cruel to me. "You didn't get to where you are by letting other people so don't go expecting me to let you walk all over me."

[[[]]]


	5. || There's no harm in being teenagers again

There’s a famous saying that goes “home is where the heart is”, but what if your heart doesn’t know where it is? I make it sound like I’m having a breakdown myself and that’s not what’s going on. I’m not having a breakdown. I’m more considering what the outcome would be for me if I really did have feelings for Negan. I don’t, I’m just speaking hypothetically here. Say I fell completely and hopelessly in love with him, according to that ‘home is where the heart is’ thing, my home would be with him at the Sanctuary. However, I don’t think that would happen at all. Even if I devoted myself to him, I still don’t think I would be able to call anywhere without my family my home. My heart would be with him, but my home would still be here. I know all these sayings and theories don’t matter all that much any more given everything else that’s going on around us, yet that’s not reason enough to stop me thinking about it all together. In fact, I think it would be fascinating to know what everyone else spend their free time thinking about, what kinds of things they miss from their old lives. 

With only half the food, the weapons and resources around Alexandria that we used to have, it means that there’s half the work to do in sorting it all out, making sure everything goes to the right places. That’s what I used to do when there was need for more than one person to be in charge of it all. Now all our stuff is gone, it’s a job that doesn’t even take an entire day for one person to do on their own. It leaves me with nothing to do for the most part of my time. It’s not something I can say I enjoy because my mind will often lead off to thinking about things I don’t really want to think about.

Despite the majority of my thoughts being about nasty, sad things that really aren’t worth the upset they bring, one thought that did cross my mind is how much it sucks that Negan and his men have to be such monsters. Like was it too much to ask to have a man like him and the sheer numbers he has for good? How can there really be that much evil all in one place and how is it fair that they were the ones to survive this far. I would say on average, before everyone became zombified, that there were more people you could consider to be good than people you could seriously condemned to being evil. Now, thinking about that uneven split of the world’s population and the chances that each of those individuals in each group would survive - to me it seems highly unlikely that all those bad people would survive without being killed by walkers or good people with some sense before making their way into such a large group where they are protected. 

Again, that just there was my brain going off on one of those little rant things that it likes to do. I’m actually sat with Tara and Daryl in the front room of the house that Tara shares with a few of people that I’ve not spoken to for long enough to have learnt their names. It’s early morning and we’re all literally waiting around for everyone else to be ready. 

Rick, in his infinite wisdom, has decided that he is going to do everything in his power to try and beat Negan. How he plans on doing that isn’t something he’s shared with anyone yet. At the moment, all we know is that he wants us all to go out and look for supplies and more weapons. He’s also relented and let me come with the rest of the core expedition group because apparently he needs as many people helping out on this that he can trust as possible. So in simple terms, he’s letting me go with everyone else because he could do with an extra pair of hands. 

Sitting in this room with these two is easily the most awkward thing that’s happened to me in at least the last 3 years. Tara knows about my fling with Negan, Daryl knows about it too, but they don’t know that each other know and I can tell they’re both sat there thinking about it without saying a word. I can almost hear their thoughts it’s radiating off the pair of them that much. What makes it even worse is that I’ve only been back since yesterday and neither of them has had the chance to talk to me about it yet. 

“You both know. Feel free to talk about it. I don’t want one of you to explode from holding it in or something like that.” I look to the pair of them sitting a space apart from each other on the couch, while I occupy the arm chair at the end of the room. Tara looks a little shellshocked that I would tell Daryl something like that and Daryl doesn’t seem to give a single shit. I guess he’s more understanding that it’s my business to tell whoever I want about. Not that Tara is a control freak, she just likes keeping tabs on who knows what so she doesn’t put her foot in it by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. 

“He knows everything?” Tara asks, seemingly caring less about other people’s feels even more than Daryl does, which I must say comes as quite a shock. I’m sure that if Daryl wasn’t Daryl he would be offended by this, but he again he still doesn’t seem to care. It takes a lot more than that to hurt his feelings. In this instance it’s a good thing because I sure wouldn’t want to have to be the one to calm him down. 

“You know, you’re lucky I don’t give a shit.” Daryl remarks for himself. 

It’s kinda weird seeing these two together like this. I mean, they have spoken to each other before on more than one occasion, it’s just weird seeing them in the capacity of sort of friends, you know, that weird stage where your friend is friends with other people and you have to meet them for the first time. They don’t really know what to say to each other and I’m hardly a master of keeping conversation going. 

“He knows everything you know.” I divert the conversation back to answering Tara’s question rather than them having an argument that’s hardly worth it. I don’t want to break it up either - they would be on their own if that happened. 

“What happened?” Daryl asks, obviously wanting to know considering he’s the one who helped me out as much as he could even though he didn’t want to. Something I still need to thank him for.

“Not much.” I lie, hoping frantically to give myself some more time to think up an alternative story for what really happened. They would both scream at me if they found out I had sex with again, like I want to scream at myself because of it. “I asked him if Rick knew. According to him, if he did ever find out it wouldn’t be because he told him.” I tell them one thing that really did happen. Of course, that’s only what he’s telling me so there’s no way of knowing that he’s being truthful. 

“You can’t keep it from him forever. He’ll find out eventually.” Daryl goes and pisses on my box of fireworks. I’m convinced I’m off the hook, for now at least. If someone goes and tells Rick about this before I’m ready to tell himself, then they’re the one who needs to be more scared of me than I am of my brother. 

“I know. Now, isn’t that time though. We’ve got enough shit piling up on us to go dumping another load on him like that. He needs to be worrying about how he’s going to bring the man to his knees, not having misconceptions that he might become his brother-in-law.” I warn the both of them to back off in a more subtle way of wording it, making it seem more about protecting Rick than protecting myself, even if we all know Rick is the more robust sibling. 

“You don’t like him, do you?” Tara reads too deeply into what I just said, sending my anxious brain into a frenzy of thinking that I actually might have already given too much away. Another unwanted though is just how much of a pain it is going to be trying to shake him off. What if I’ve given him the wrong signals? 

Now isn’t the fucking time Alexus. 

“Does anyone like him?” I answer her with another question. It’s personally something that drives me crazy people to me, but I kind of understand it sometimes because it is a rather fun way to piss other people off sometimes. 

“No, but the rest of us didn’t fuck him.” Daryl makes a sour comment. I understand him being upset, being mad, or however it is he feels. So for one of the very few times in my life, I’m just going to have to suck it up and deal with it. I hate doing so because every bone in my body wants to tell him he’s being a prick. However, another part of me is sure he knows he’s being a prick and doesn’t care about it either. The biggest problem here is that it doesn’t leave me with anything else to say. The only options I can think of are either retaliate or say nothing at all. 

“Lay off Daryl.” Tara jumps to my defence, which surprises me greatly. She’s been so against this whole thing and now she’s putting herself in the way to stop me from being the victim of abuse for it. She says it only sounding half serious about it. I can’t really complain, it’s more than I thought she would say on the matter. 

“I don’t think now is the right time to talk about this.” I caution. I don’t think there will ever be a right time to talk about it, all I do know is that now certainly isn’t the right time. We are about to go out into the big bad world - our minds should be thinking about how we are going to stay alive and gather the resources we need. “We should probably be heading out to join everyone else.” I try getting this to move in any direction other than it ending up in an argument. Having bad feeling before we go out is what gets people killed and we’re far from being in a position for that to be happening again any time soon. 

[[[]]]

Naturally, me and Rick paired up with each other when it came to splitting off into smaller groups. The best way to describe it would be by calling it a mass scavenging mission. We set out to find anything we could get our hands on. We did pretty well all in all. We got a couple of handguns that had been left by some unfortunate souls that lost a fight with a walker or two, we also took the stash of canned goods they had stored away in the back of the gas station they were holed up in. We’re yet to find out how well the others did. We’re currently sat in a car driving back to Alexandria. Normally there would be some kind of rally point for everyone to meet at so we could travel back together. However, with targets on our backs at the moment, that would have been an unwise thing to do. All it would take is one attack and the most part of the community would be gone all in foul swoop. While we all know the risk of being split up and travelling only in pairs, Rick made the executive decision to try and keep us from suffering any major traumas. 

“You’re real quiet today.” Rick comments, resting his arm along the door frame of the car, using only one hand to control the steering wheel. “You doing alright?” He asks a question to get something out of me, he knows I wouldn’t say anything otherwise. 

“I’m fine.” I give a short, sweet answer. It’s all that needs to be said. 

“You’ve not been right for weeks now. Since you had your run in with Negan. Then you go and disappear for a couple of days. I may not say a lot but I’m sure as hell not stupid, I can see there’s something going on, even if you don’t want to tell me.” He grinds on at me to tell me what’s going on. 

I’m half tempted to just have it out with him and tell him exactly what happened, but I have a couple of reasons against doing that which are stopping me. 1) telling him news like that while he’s trying to drive is probably a bad idea. 2) I don’t know if he’s prepared to be hearing something like that. And 3) I’ve not had nearly enough time to psych myself up.

“My head just isn’t in a good place at the moment.” I use the mental health card that I really shouldn’t be exploiting like that, but, come on, if it’s going to make me suffer for the most part of my life then I think it’s more than fair to use it to my advantage every now and then. “And seeing that guy just kinda makes you depressed thinking about just how evil people can be.” I add more to make my case sound more convincing. 

“You wanna talk about anything. I’m all ears.” Rick always does this. Whether you think it’s annoying or not, I can’t appreciate it more that he always tries to help me out with these things. It just kinda makes me feel bad that I’m kind of using it as an excuse. 

“Thanks, but I’m okay. It’s nothing I can’t sort out on my own.” As soon as the words pass my lips I know that’s I’m not convinced of myself at all - whilst also slightly confusing myself with using a double negative like that. Car rides like this make me think back to the days when me and Rick would be driving along with nothing said between us at all, the only noise could be a whirring of the engine accompanying the soft melodies of the country music coming out of the car stereo system at a low volume. The weather seems constantly gloomier now though. Before it was always blistering hot this time of year, now it’s bearable and even a little overcast to some extent.  
“All right.” Rick leaves it there, which I’m thankful for. I want this time to think a little bit. As much as I like being occupied by other things, sometimes there is need to think about what course of actions you’re going to take. If you run into these things without any sense of your options, it’s going to be left purely down to chance. 

I’ll spare you the tediousness of having to hear about every last detail of my thoughts, I won’t go into it. All I will say is that with the wind whipping through the car from the open window, my hair being blown back behind me and cruising along the road with my brother driving me, this right here is almost nice. 

Almost. 

[[[]]]

With the major loss of technology and power when people started turning into dead cannibals, it’s rare to have any kind of personal electronic device like almost everyone used to have. I have the luxury of still owning the iPod I had on me when I ran out of my work and got home as quick as I could when I saw on the news what was going on. I would listen to it on the metro on the way to work and on the way home in the evening. 

Anyways, I still have it now. I only have the opportunity to charge it up every once in a blue moon when I’m able to get my hands on the one solar generator device thing the entire safe zone has to share between everyone. It will charge up anything you can find a cable to charge it up with. If you can’t find a cable, you don’t charge it. Even with the miracle of having a functioning MP3 player and a way of still getting power into it, some people are still not happy. I’m not completely ungrateful, I’ve just always been a sucker for high quality audio gear. I could only get my hands on the standard earbuds that they used to throw into the box whenever you got a new iPhone. You know, the really shitty ones that they gave you because they were under more of a social obligation to put them in than anything else. 

I’m laying down, on my bed, having a similar evening to how I would before everyone died. The only thing I’m missing is a TV, a DVD player and a stack of movies that’s taller than I am. Maybe some junk food too. Tonight, I’m minus my movie collection, minus my junk food and instead I’m simply listening to the same songs I have on my iPod on repeat over and over again. 

My room in the house is the one that’s tucked away at the very back of the building. The larger window in the room looks out onto the back, practically backing straight onto the large metal wall that surrounds the entire perimeter of the place. I’m right next to the bathroom, so while the toilet is sporadic on when it decides to flush, whenever someone needs to have a piss it’s usually easily heard from my room. I’m the only one who knows that mind you because I’m the only one who ever stays in here. 

In case you were wondering, which you probably weren’t to be honest, my music library consists of all the staples of any punk rock world you can think of. Green Day, Fall Out Boy, ACDC all kinds of things like that. A few other bands too, a few other genres. The thing that gets me the most is that I don’t think there’s going to be any new music for me to listen to before the time comes that I’m going to kick it. The thought is kinda depressing, more than this fucking life we lead was already. 

I’m listening to my music and I hear a tapping sound not coming from the already beating rhythm of the bass drum. I pause the music for a second and pull one of the buds out of my ear. I keep quiet and listen out for the noise again. I don’t hear anything and so I put the thing back in my ear and go back to listening to my music that sounds like a miniature concert inside a metal can. 

My music is playing again for less than a second before I hear the knocking again. It’s, again, a single tapping sound and this time I definitely heard it. It’s like someone knocking just once on the window on your front door. This second time I pull out both of my ear phones and throw the whole unit plus the wire attached to it down onto my bed. It does a little bounce and lands just short of my pillow. I use the momentum of swinging my legs to get myself off my bed. Once I’m up, standing on my own two feet, I ponder on over to my window at the back of the room and look on out to see what the hell it is that’s disturbing me. At this point I’m not sure if I’d be more scared about it being someone trying to get my attention or trying to figure out what it could be if it wasn’t someone else. 

I look out of the glass, but there’s really nothing to see. In all honesty I can’t see anything, it’s too dark to see anything at all. Despite the total cover of darkness, I do try looking around, but it doesn’t help at all. It especially doesn’t help when you’re half blind and you lost your glasses months ago. 

I’m surveying the area one last time when I damn near die from a heart attack when a hooded, covered face appears in my window. I shit you not, I am not making this one up, nor am I dreaming it. I have no idea how any human has the strength and/or agility to scale up here, but axe murder or not, they sure deserve credit for getting all the way up here. The masked stranger pulls their balaclava down off their face and if almost having a heart attack the first time wasn’t enough. My damn heart feels like it stops beating in my very chest and falls through the floor. You know, like when something goes really fucking wrong. Like when you’ve been a complete ass by keeping a secret from someone and they find out. That kind of feeling. 

The face belongs to Negan. His fucking face. In all the glory and terror that he brings with it. 

He taps on the window, knocking a couple of times. Clearly signaling that he wants me to let him in. 

In sheer panic, along with not knowing what on Earth to do instead, I rush back over to the window (after having jumped away from it) and pull up the bottom section of it. I open the window and he crawls on through. He shifts himself up and pushes so that his front is across the window ledge. He lands on my floor with a thud and makes me heart beat at twice the normal rate at the sheer thought of someone else living in this house coming in here to check that I’ve not hurt myself or something like that. Any kind of stirring at this time in the morning is a cause for concern for anyone that happens to be woken by it. I think it’s about 1.30 am. 

He gets himself up and goes from being at my feet to towering over me in a matter of seconds. When I say towering over me, I mean literally standing next to me and looking down at me. I look back up at him and I feel like opening the window was a bad idea. I mean I knew it was a bad idea, I’m just unsure of where this is going at the moment.

“Well, hello there.” Negan greets me in the same way he always seems to. He smiles and doesn’t move an inch, even though we are way too uncomfortably close to each other for having a conversation. He’ll still looking down as he smirks. 

“What are you doing here?” I jump straight into it. 

“Wow, not even a hello?” He keeps smiling and it’s the first time he’s not scaring my by doing it. All things considered, the one time he comes over here without any reason in the middle of the night and grins at me is when I should probably be the most scared, but it’s had an adverse effect.

“The juvenile act of throwing stones at my window is way too intriguing to delay finding out what you want with unessaccery hellos.” I explain that I really want to know what’s going on here. 

I speak in a hushed tone and Negan is too. I’m speaking lowly because I don’t want to wake anyone and the fact that he’s doing the same is surprising. Him being the person he is, it would make sense for him to talk as normal because he shouldn’t give a shit about who he wakes up and who he doesn’t. Him matching my volume tells me that it’s because of 2 different possibilities. The first one being because he’s alone and he hasn’t got the man-power to risk being found out and he thinks I’m stupid enough not to figure that one out. The second thing it could be, as crazy and unlikely as this might sound, is that he’s actually respectful of me - at least a little bit. 

“There’s no harm in being teenagers again, is there?” Negan hits back at me for calling him a child. He’s got a playful glint in his eye as he retains his composure, which makes it even clearer than I’m going to be the one to break the stance long before he even thinks about it. “Tell me, because I know you already know the answer to this one, what reason would someone have for throwing stones at a beautiful girl’s window?” He does that really annoying thing where he throws the questioning back at me.

“Because you’re lonely and you want someone to screw because everyone else is too shit scared of you to go anywhere near you?” I play him at his own questions game, throwing a little venom in with it. 

“You take me for more of a monster than I am.” He tries telling me I’m wrong. I know I’m not. I’ve been here before. He’s not the first man in history to go prowling after a woman because he’s alone and feelings don’t seem to make any difference to the way they act. Not that I have feelings for him, I’m just saying I know how this goes.

“I don’t think I do.” I take a turn in telling him that he’s wrong. “The things you’ve done have booked you a one way ticket to hell.” I decide to try and have a little fun with him. After the initial panic of this whole thing having now gone away, it’s given me a boost. Makes me feel a little more daring. 

“And you don’t get a ticket for fucking such an evil man? Now that’s not fucking fair is it? I think you should be getting the seat right beside me.” He dips his head down and kisses me. I’m not sure about the timing myself, considering he just insulted me, but every time he does this I almost feel like forgiving him. I’m not sure what for, but for something. 

A couple of seconds later when he’s still kissing me, he slips his hands down to rest up each side of my neck, his thumb brushes up and runs along my chin. It’s the kind of intimate moment I’m not sure I’m ready for yet, but I keep pushing forward with it anyways. I slide my own hands down his back and my arms encase his body as I slide my fingers slightly into the waistband of his sweat pants. I fumble with the band around the top of his boxers and push the tips of my fingers behind those as well. 

He pulls his mouth away from me, but keeps his hands trained on my neck as he goes to talk. “You really do have a nerve calling me out for being a ‘lonely old man looking for a quick lay’ and then going on to be the one with your hands in my underwear.” He paraphrases me saying what I thought he was here for and exaggerates how far into his clothes I’ve put my hands.

“If you would just tell me what you’re here for, I wouldn’t need to go jumping to conclusions.” I push him to give me a straight answer. I attempt to pull myself away from him, realising how intimate and damn right inappropriate us remaining in that stance for no reason is. Negan is quick to step in and stop me from moving away from him. He kept me close to him by gripping my shoulder with only one of his hands, yet squeezing firmly enough to keep me where I am. 

“Even if I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me. You always think I have an ulterior motive.” His smile drops slightly. He releases some of the pressure he has on my shoulder and lets go of me. I stay rooted to the spot, there’s no point in going against him, it wouldn’t achieve anything. He raises his hands to pull his hood down and unzip the front of it, revealing a black t-shirt underneath, looser fitting than the ones he normally wears.

“Try me, ‘old man’.” I use the words he used to describe himself, hoping that he realises I never called him that the first time. That was all him and his very deeply buried insecurities. I shove my hands into the pockets on my own hoodie, seeing as they seem a little redundant hanging at my sides without a purpose. 

His smirk returns, thankfully appreciating my banter like I was hoping he would. Testing my limits with him is the only way I’m ever going to find out exactly how much he will let me get away with him. He peels off his hoodie and throws it onto the window ledge behind him without looking,

“I simply wanted to see you.” He stands completely still, he’s not done talking yet. “You came all the way to see me, I couldn’t not return the favour.” He shifts a little, retaining the same distance, looking down at me from having run his eyes around looking at all the contents of my room. “Seeing as everyone here wants me dead, especially your delightful brother, this is the only time I could plan a visit without tickling everyone’s balls.” He uses phrases only he is able to think up. It’s puts me in a state between wanting to laugh and wanting to physically cringe. 

“And you didn’t come all this way to screw me, no?” I decide to be upfront about this. It’s the best way to be. At least that’s the idea, it doesn’t always work so well when my anxiousness is high and I’m willing to do anything to avoid any kind of confrontation. 

“Not if you don’t want to, my dear.” He uses a possessive noun, I try not to over analyse it, but when you’ve been in the field of psychology as long as I have that’s a very hard thing to do. Not that there really is that much to look into on this one. “You always had the choice, you know that, I never forced you. You will always have that option, you know that too.” He pushes a stray strand of hair back behind my ear, it swiftly brings to my attention what a mess my hair is. It must be starting to resemble a bird’s nest at this point. 

“I know.” I confirm that much is probably the only thing I’ve never doubted him on. Of all the things he does, all the things he thinks are okay, the one thing he can’t stomach is rape and harming children. It’s one of the most complex things I’ve ever put my brain to think about. Part of me understands in, the other part of me really doesn’t. I’m sure he has his reasons, probably something along the lines of his mother being a rape victim and him have his kid die before this all happened, but I’m nowhere near being close to being in a position to ask him something like that. “Can I be honest?” I feel the panic creeping up inside of me even as I ask the question, because my brain knows what’s going to be said next and I’m worried I could ruin the whole thing when it’s going so well. 

“Sure can.” He turns himself away from me and walks on over to my bed. He sits down on the left hand side of my bed, perching on the edge. “Join me, Alexus.” He taps the sheets next to him.

I follow behind him and sit next to him, closer to the foot of the bed rather than the headboard. The zip on the front of my hoodie does that really annoying thing where it ridges up and so I undo it to stop it from getting in the way. I pull the zipper down my front. I’ve got a tank top on with no bra on, that thing comes off as soon as humanly possibly and I wasn’t planning on any one scaling up to my window and falling through it. 

“What did you want to tell me?” He turns completely side on and looks at me, almost staring at me. 

“You said you always let me have the choice… I, just, I’d rather not tonight.” I hate myself for sounding so scared of putting my foot down like this. You see, the thing is, I would ever so happily let him do whatever he wanted to me, I’m doing this because I want to test the waters. I want to see how he will react to me denying him, whether he walks away like I’m expecting him to, or whether he really does stay because he wanted nothing more than wanted to spend time with me. I feel as if I’m setting myself up for a fall, but I need to experience to reality of these things, so I don’t let myself get too attached like I often do.

I look at him and he looks like he’s about to snap. I start considering how stupid I am for even thinking something like this would be a good idea. Suddenly, his very serious, straight face, breaks into a smile as he laughs to himself.

“You should have seen your face just then, I really had you going!” He taunts me. He smiles so wide that the really sharp pair of teeth he has make an appearance.

“You’re such an asshole!” I exclaim, hitting him on the front section of his shoulder, hard enough yet not too hard as to cause any real pain.

“I’m sure that’s something we already established.” He pulls what can only be described as an agreement face – the expression someone usually pulls when they’ve actually listened to someone else’s point and agreed that it might be a better way of going about things. “Because it sure as shit isn’t the first time you’ve called me that.” He kicks his knackered old sneakers off and pushes them up to the side of the little unit next to my bed, presumably so that nobody accidentally trips on them.

I’m rather lost on what I should be thinking at this point. Fine, he doesn’t care that I’m not going to have sex with him tonight, however, he’s taken it upon himself to assume that I’m A-Okay with him staying here tonight. As it just so happens, if he wants to take that risk, then I’ve no problem with him sleeping here. Regardless of how I do actually feel about it, I’m not sure if it’s okay that he’s assumed as much as he has. I’m sure he would leave upon me asking him to do so, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t cause bad feeling and that’s not something I can have if I want my grand scheme to work. I need to keep him close so I can work on tearing his establishment down from it’s very foundations.

I let my mind swirl in a small vortex as I roll my hoodie off my shoulders, pull my arms out of the sleeves and let the material fall behind me into a slump on the bed. Negan reaches across, picks it up and throws it a small distance to join his own discarded sweater. It’s not worth questioning him about it.

“Are you staying the night?” I ask another question, hating how awkward, disjointed and staggered the conversation has been so far. It’s been almost painful. I’m the kind of person that would literally rather be punched than have to deal with difficult encounters like this, which really doesn’t help when conversations do end up being like this one has turned out.

“That’s all up to you.” He gives me complete control. “Do you want me to stay?” He hooks his legs up onto the bed and tucks them behind where I’m sitting so that he’s laying down. He interlocks his fingers and places them between his head and the pillow behind him, craning his head up at a slight angle so that he’s looking down his body at me. It’s clear that at least one of us is comfortable. Shame it doesn’t wear off on me.

“Yes and no.” I give a conflicting answer. It was either that or have me sitting there awkwardly saying nothing while I worked out the best way to phrase it. I’m being so erratic about literally everything tonight and it’s only making me worse.

“Lay here with me.” He directs me. He shifts himself over to the other side of the bed, leaving the space that he was in for me to take. I slump back and let gravity do most of the work as I hit the mattress with a thud. Well, as much as a thud as you can get from hitting something with springs inside it. Imagine someone having a fist fight with a marshmallow and that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to get at.

We stay there, laying on our backs, looking up at the ceiling for a while, saying nothing. It helps. It calms things down a little and gives us some time to reset. I take the time to listen to his breathing. As weird as it sounds, it’s nice to have another, living, breathing human being next to me for a change. Yes, he was next to me when I ended up spending the night in his bedroom, but this time it seems more real that we’re in my bedroom. It’s like an internal battle between the rational half of my brain telling me not sort my life out and stop playing with fire like this and the other half of my brain telling me that it’s okay. It will be what it will be and I should do what I want for once without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The massive issue here being that I do worry about what everyone else thinks, even when I don’t want to.

A brief while later, I feel Negan shift himself over onto his side. I was in the stages before falling asleep and would most likely have fallen asleep any minute if he hadn’t have disturbed me. 

“You weren’t kidding when you said you wasn’t good at small talk, huh?” He jokes, seeming not to know how to handle such a situation without using sarcasm to water it down. I can feel his eyes burning into the side of my head as he looks right at me. I half consider staying exactly where I am and keep my eyes trained on the section of the ceiling directly above me, but I decide against that. There’s no point in doing that. 

“No disrespect, but it’s like 3 in the morning or something and I don’t have the energy to engage in small talk.” I say while in the process of turning myself over to face inwards towards him. Even he’s starting to look tired - his eyes look heavy and he’s been constantly yawning for at least the last 20 minutes. 

“Fine, Fine.” He brushes it off. “What were you doing up this late anyway?” He engages in the very chit-chat I said I was too tired for. It’s also hard to concentrate on how I’m going to respond to any of his questions when I’m too bewildered by him talking to me about normal stuff.

“I, amazingly, managed to get some charge on my iPod. I was listening to my music.” I pick up the device that was still between the pillows that each of our heads are resting on. I pass it over to him. Whether he has any interest in looking at it or not doesn’t take away from the fact that it really is amazing that there’s some charge on the battery. 

He instantly finds the end of the wire and shoves one of the little white buds into his ear. He clicks the button on the front of it, in the middle of the selection wheel, and starts looking through the contents of the music library. He swipes around the wheel a bit, clicks the button a couple of times and then eventually music start pouring out of the little speaker that he’s not got in his ear. I had the volume up a lot louder than I thought I did. It’s so loud I can make out the song he’s listening to word-for-word. It’s Back in Black by ACDC. One of the stand alone best rock songs that ever were.

“I almost forgot what music sounded like.” He remarks, sounding taken aback by it slightly. I guess for me it wasn’t quite so drastic because I’ve been able to listen to it a little at a time, but for a lot of people I’m sure they’ve not heard any music in years. While nobody really knows exactly we’ve been living in this new worlds, as much as it’s probably been 5 years or something like that, it feels like it’s been decades. It also freaks me out that I don’t know how old I really am. I could be a year younger or a year older than what I think I am. “It’s a damn shame.” He tells me something I already knew. He presses the pause button and hands the thing back to me. I wrap up the wires and shove the whole lot under my pillow. 

“It’s also a shame that it’s so late and I’m not asleep yet.” I tell him, more than aware that I’m starting to get grumpy because of it. 

“Alright, princess.” He almost mocks me, confirming how obvious it is that I need my sleep; I’ll never understand those who can have like 6 hours sleep and function perfectly fine. “Not that you need the beauty sleep.” He winks at me and shifts himself so that his legs are hanging off the side of the bed away from me. 

“You’re leaving?” I question him, thinking how completely absurd it would be for him to go anywhere in the dark like this. He probably has someone waiting around for him, but that doesn’t stop the dark from being an extremely dangerous place. 

“I took it you wanted me to. You never asked me to stay. Seemed like you were just being polite” He stands, seeming like it’s taking twice the energy it does for him to get up onto his feet. 

“Stay here.” I utter the words and he’s laid back down besides me within a matter of milliseconds. He lets out a deep sigh, clearly relieved that I’ve chosen that option. 

“I know you said you did want to screw tonight… is making out an option at all?” He pushes his luck. 

I think about it for a second, and literally a second because it’s not a hard decision to make. It should be, it really should be, but it’s not. I shuffle myself as close to him as I can, he shifts himself around too to twist his leg up with him and put his hand on my neck where it was before. He smiles at me and doesn’t waste any more time in kissing me like I’m sure he’s been wanting to since the moment he landed on my floor with a thump. 

If he wasn’t Negan, if he wasn’t a raging psycho who killed people I loved, if he didn’t lead a colony of terrible people, if the world wasn’t falling apart as we know it, it would have been perfect. In his words, it’s a damn shame.

[[[]]]


	6. || You could do anything you wanted

In the morning following, as I first stir from rising, I’m not sure who it is I hate more; myself or the man resting beside me - Negan. I’m also unsure of where my body begins and his ends. I retract myself from the tangle one limb at a time so I can empty my bladder because if I put it off any longer I’m going to implode from the sheer effort of trying not to wet myself. I’m sure it’s not something Negan would appreciate me doing either. 

“Oooh, don’t go.” Negan almost rolls out of the side of the bed as he reaches for me as I stand up and take my first steps of the morning towards my ensuite bathroom. All the men in the house decided they would let me have it seeing as I was the only woman in the house. At least I think it’s still the morning. We stayed up so late [early], I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d slept in until the afternoon. 

“Stop being so damn dramatic. I need a piss. I’ll be back in a second.” I reassure him that I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. He should have figured that much seeing as I’m wearing nothing more than the t-shirt he threw onto the floor halfway through the night because he ended up getting too warm. I stuck to my guns and nothing happened, but I ditched my clothes and opted for his shirt out of being too hot also. It’s just about long enough on me to cover up everything that needs covering. 

I close the door to my bathroom behind me and proceed to taking a piss. Once I’m finished I remain in the sitting down position for a minute or two with my head in my hands as I let my mind spin and I think about what’s really going on here.

I flush the toilet, wash my hands and make my way back out to the bedroom. Negan is lying on his back, listening to the iPod that I shoved under my pillow before I went to sleep last night. As soon as he notices me, he starts mining the song he’s currently listening to and dances as best he can while still in bed. I slowly make my way back to the bed and by the time I’m standing next to my bed he’s softly singing to me and is playing the air guitar on his knees. Trust me, it really is a sign to behold. It’s certainly not something I ever thought I’d witness. 

The song Negan is currently serenading me is ‘Shoot to Thrill’ by ACDC. It’s not the most romantic song, but that’s not a bad thing. I can’t stand love songs, they either make you sad because you’ve not got anyone or they drag back up all the painful memories of when you’ve been hurt before. Either way you want to look at it, love songs positively suck ass. 

I pull a face at him the same way my mother used to do to me whenever I did something weird as a child. It was a face I became more than familiar with to say the least. It has no effect on him and he continues on with his performance anyway, me being in the room with him doesn’t seem to make a blind spot of difference. He’s clearly not got any confidence issues, making him the complete polar opposite of me.

“As talented of a musician that you are, you do realise you can’t spend all day in my bedroom.” I remind him that he’s (quite literally) sleeping behind enemy lines. 

“I’ve already told the saviours that I’m on vacation.”He retaliates, removing the earpieces and pressing the pause button on the device. “They should be able to survive without me for a day or two. If I go back and it’s all turned to shit then I’ve still learnt a valuable lesson. I’ll know the fuckers aren’t to be trusted on their own.” He describes it as if it were a win-win situation. It just goes to show how blissfully unaware he is of the fact that all the communities he thinks he’s in control of are planning to revolt against him. It’s like history is repeating itself all over again from back in the past when the English peasants revolted against their government. If he had any idea this was going on, there’s not a hope in hell he would risk leaving his empire without him being there to keep an eye on the place. 

“Calling it a vacation makes it sound like you’re taking me somewhere nice.” I push back against the idea of him spending any more time here than he really needs to because it’s not a smart idea. All it takes is for a single person to be standing in just the right place to be able to see him for just a fraction of a second and it’s game over. He can think he’s top dog all he wants, but on his own he doesn’t stand a chance against a whole mob of people who wouldn’t think for a second before trying to kill him. He would be done for. As twisted as he may be, he still bleeds just the same as everyone else still living on the face of this planet. 

“I’ll take you somewhere nice! Where do you want to go, Alexus?” Negan takes the joke as me wanting him to actually do as much, as if I were fishing for it and he took the bait. I wasn’t, but I am rather interested to see where he would take me. Not to mention that I’ve done enough exploring recently to last me a lifetime. 

“There are many places I’d like to go, but, you see, galavanting with you is another thing I’d have to lie to my . family about and that’s not something I want to have to do more than I really have to.” I try telling him again that my loved ones are always going to take the priority of my moral compass as much as I can help it. I’ve not done everything in the last month or so with their best interests at heart, I know that. All I will say is that if push came to shove and it came down to them or him, they would always win. 

“You have a think about it and come up with somewhere we can escape to for a couple of days. Let me treat you.” He finally gives into his kneeling position, getting himself off of the bed and coming to stand right besides me. He looks down upon me the same way he always does whenever the two of us are standing so close. He puts his hands on my hips and the contact makes me want to run my hands down the front of his body. I don’t though, some part of me feels like it would be like admitting to myself that I did have feelings for him. 

“Please come back with me.” Negan completely changes both the mood and the direction of the exchange we’re having. It seems to me that he’s going to bring up this same point every time he sees me and every time I’m going to have to tell him that it’s just never going to happen. I can’t figure out whether he thinks I’ve been lying about not wanting to live with him this whole time so far or if he thinks that one day, after all his relentless pestering, it’s going to work and that he’s changed my mind. I don’t want to be a traitor. In an ideal world, where he wasn’t your stereotypical villain, I’d try something more with him. Given the current circumstances of the way we live now, that’s not something I can afford to do. Not now, not ever. 

“There’s no way I could live with you, you already know that.” I bring back up the small detail of something he’s already more than aware of. I pull myself away from him and proceed to walking around my room, hunting down all the items of clothing that I’m going to wear for the day. 

“You could do anything you wanted. There’s nothing physically stopping you from packing up your shit and making a life with me. Heck, I’d even let you share my room with me and that’s a big deal. No working your way up through the ranks like everyone else had to.” He speaks to me as I rummage around my room for something to wear, himself taking a seat back down on the side of my bed that’s nearest to me. I assume he’s waiting for his t-shirt before he starts getting himself ready. 

“And you’re going to be the one to stop my family’s hearts from breaking when I tell them that I’ve ditched them to shack up with the one person they hate more than anyone else. I’m Rick’s sister too, he’s a big deal to the people here, it would make him look bad as well as making me look like the spawn of the devil and that’s not fair on him.” I explain, without it making any difference at all. He still thinks he can talk me into it. 

“What does it matter what it looks like?” Negan doesn’t give a shit about what people think. He also doesn’t understand how other people care about what others think of them. The thing that gets me the most is how he can be so understanding of me having anxiety and how not to push me too far, yet still not be able to comprehend how this would send me into turmoil.

“Because I love the people here, Negan. Their opinions matter to me.” I inform him. I pull some underwear up my legs, pull the shirt I’m wearing up off my body and throw it back in Negan’s direction. I shuffle around the pile of clothes I’ve made in an attempt to find my bra. I secure the clasp behind my back and pull the straps over my shoulders before finally shifts my boobs around so everything is sitting in the right place. I go to pick up a discarded t-shirt of my own, but Negan gently grabs my hand and stops me from getting dressed any more than I am. 

“Hold up a second. This is an excellent view. Let me appreciate it for a while.” He quite literally runs his eyes up and down my body a couple of times without even an ounce of shame. 

I make a few small movements to give him a better viewing experience. He doesn’t deserve it, but the growing erection making a tent in his sweatpants can’t help but spur me on. 

“I would give my left arm for a working camera to take a photograph of this.” He admits that his mind spends a fair amount of time in the gutter. I don’t see why he would want a photo to use for later because I don’t believe for one second that I’m the only person he’s screwing. A man like him leading a group of people as large as the saviours almost guarantees that he gets exactly what he wants from them, including fucking the women that agree to slip into bed with him. I bet as soon as he goes back he’s doing all the things he does with me to at least 3 other women.

“It’s really not worth it.” I respond unsure of if that was the right thing to say or not. I take my hand away from being pinned under his and put my hands on my hips. It’s not meant to be yet another seductive pose, however, that’s probably exactly what he thinks it is. It’s simply the way I stand a lot of the time. It’s not my fault if he thinks it’s attractive. 

“That is where you’re wrong, my dear.” He doesn’t smile; he reaches forward, grabs my sides and pulls me forwards with just enough force until I’m in a position of straddling him. He keeps his hands trained to my sides and rests his chin on my shoulder as he talks directly into my ear. His stubble scratches my bare skin as he angles his head to the side ever so slightly. “I know you said you didn’t want me to give it to you last night. But, do tell me, how are you feeling this morning?” He pulls away from me and again looks at me with the same smoldering look as before, the one he knows is going to get him some action before he leaves here as long as he plays his cards right. He leans forward and whispers to me again, “ I really hope you’re in the mood this time.” He mutters, burying his face into the side of my neck and starting to suck at the area there. He encases his arms around me and holds me close to him for once rather than using me as a play toy. 

“You pretend that you don’t, but you know exactly how persuasive you are don’t you?” I ask. The both of us already knowing full well that it’s more of a statement than it is anything else. 

“Me? Persuasive? Not at all. You feel free to stop whenever you feel like it darling.” Negan talks without moving his face more than a single milimeter away from me. He kisses his way around my neck before finally settling on deciding to make out. He constantly shifts himself around below me, most likely trying to find the most comfortable place for his hard on to sit. I lower myself down onto him as much as I can to give up both a slight bit of pleasure. 

He takes me completely by surprise at the point where he stops the motion of everything to look me dead in the eyes. 

“I mean it you know. At any point you want me to stop, you just let me know. Even if you say it’s okay then you change your mind in the middle of my banging your brains out, don’t be afraid to tell me. That’s not how I want this to be.” He maintains strong eye contact the whole time he’s concentrating on me. 

“Okay. I’ll have to hit you or something if I want you to stop.” I agree, seeing that he’s trying to do a good thing here. At least he has some morals. 

“I don’t think that’s the brightest idea you’ve ever had. Hitting me might turn me on ever more.” He quickly snaps back into the same asshole everyone knows him as. Negan being seriously like that, even for such a tiny amount of time, was almost scary. It’s like his act broke down for a second, like the mask cracked and there’s actually something left of the human he used to be inside there. 

“The man who spends his entire time dominating the lives of everyone else secretly enjoys being abused behind the closed doors of the bedroom?” I phrase it like a question. 

He laughs at me and instantly goes about subtly sliding his fingering into the front of my panties smiling at the faces of surprise and pleasure that I’m pulling at him.

“Are you sure we have the time for this?” I concern myself with the worrying that we don’t even know what time it is now, let alone how late is going to be when we’re finished. People will start worrying about me, as ironic as it may be, if I spend all day in my bedroom without so much as saying hello to anyone. 

“You’re kidding, right? There’s always time.”

[[[]]]

Despite starting to think he would never leave, Negan did eventually make his way back to his saviours. Managing to defy all the odds and make his way out of Alexandria in the broad daylight. It was seemingly easier than I thought it was going to be. He left just after lunchtime, seeing as we didn’t wake up as late as we thought we did, when most people were either busy going back to their designated jobs after their lunch break or anyone who wasn’t doing that was gearing up to go out on a run. Nobody seemed to notice the hooded figure climbing out of my window and scaling the metallic structure that Carl and his girlfriend are forever using to leave the compound without letting anyone know beforehand. 

At least, I didn’t think anyone saw. Apparently I was very stupid to think it would be that easy because, of course, these things never are. The only way I was lucky is that the person who say was someone who was already aware of me having the original relation with the man that’s slowly pulling our lives apart one piece at a time. 

My darling nephew stormed over to my front door as soon as he’d seen Negan leaving my room and he was able to work out what had happened. Another thing that worked in my favour was the fact that I was the only person in the house when it all kicked off. 

“You’re still screwing him?!” Carl virtually kicks open my front door, holding his younger sister in his arms as he does so. He sort of catches me off guard with how violently he’s reacting to this. I expected him to be upset with me, but I never thought it would be something on this level. 

“Whoa, whoa there Carl. Calm the hell down.” I raise my voice to the point where I’m not quite shouting, it’s not my style. There’s no need either, it wouldn’t make the situation any better for either me or him. If anything, it would probably only make things worse. 

“Really? You want me to calm down?” He shuts the door with his foot and sets Judith down on the ground at his feet so she can clamber around the place as much as her little heart desires.

“Well, shouting at me sure isn’t going to change a damn thing.” I give him a little reality check. You also need to remember that I’m an adult who’s responsible for their own actions.” I lay down as much authority as much as I can considering I’ve been the one lying to him. 

“But, are you screwing Negan?” He asks the same question a second time. 

“Whether I’m actually having sex with him or not is none of your business. And don’t take that personally either, it’s none of anyone’s business.” I give an indirect answer the same way a politician answers every question. I don’t want to admit to it, nor do I want to directly lie about it either. 

“You’re totally screwing him.” Carl shakes his head at me in utter disgrace. As if I’ve just told him that I killed his dog that died when he was 10 years old. I didn’t - to make that crystal clear. 

“What does it matter who I’m sleeping with?” I ask the question even though the answer is pretty obvious. “Like as long as it doesn’t interfere with anything else then what does it matter?” I justify my actions as best I can. “Negan hasn’t said anything about what the saviours and how they do things and I haven’t said a single word about our plans either.” 

“We are talking about the same person here?” Carl looks dead at me. “After all the things he’s done?” 

“That’s not something I’ve forgotten what he’s done, but that doesn’t mean I can’t sleep with the man.” I defend what I’m doing when I know I shouldn’t be.

“HE KILLED OUR FRIENDS. HE STEALS OUR FOOD, OUR WEAPONS. He doesn’t deserve anything from you.” Carl starts getting more and more agitated. He seems to be more upset that Negan is getting something he wants out of someone he cares about more than the baseline fact that his aunt is doing things with someone he doesn’t like. 

“He’s not taking anything from me. It doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing between us, it’s literally just sex.” He’s old enough for me to be honest with him and say it as it is. Although, him being old enough to hear it doesn’t mean that he’s mature enough to try and understand sex without it being a romantic relationship. It took me a long time to work that one out too. I don’t expect him to like it, I just wish he would try and understand it from my point of view. 

“Just sex? That’s almost worst, like it’s actually gross.” He fake gags, not giving me an inch. 

“I’m sorry Carl, but I’m not about to change what I want to do because other people don’t like it.” I make a stupid comment. Carl knows it to be stupid as do I. He knows I’ve not got it in me to stand up to everyone else’s opinions. 

“Then you need to tell Dad.” Carl instructs me. He pushes his hair back out of his eyes. He walks around to slump down in one of the armchairs, going down with so much force that he almost hits the floor on his way down. 

“Not a chance.” I argue with him, taking a little more time than he did in walking around to the sitting area and setting myself down in a seat a little across the room from him. “I’ll tell you dad in my own time.” I keep trying to convince myself that I’ll actually get around to doing that some time.

“You either need to tell him or tell Negan that you’re going to stop shagging him. You don’t want to lie, because I know you don’t like lying, and I don’t want to lie either. It was okay keeping it a secret the first time because you were trying to protect us, but I’m not lying for you now you’re being stupid and doing it over and over again.” He gives me an ultimatum with a more than fair reason on why he’s being like this. 

“Whatever you think, you need to keep a lid on this whole thing for now.” I ask him nicely. The least he can do is play ball when I’ve been more than chilled with him when he’s been overreacting. Not to mention the masses of secrets I’ve kept from my brother for him over the last 18 years; it wouldn’t kill him to keep the one for me for a little while longer. 

He says nothing for a good while, sitting and staring into space as he considers which way he wants to take this. I don’t think he quite realises the power he holds at this very moment in time. He could tear me down if he really wanted to. 

“Fine. But think how useful this could be for us. If it means nothing, then betraying him shouldn’t be an issue for you.” He plays me very skillfully, proving that he thinks just like his dad does. That is exactly the same thing Rick would say if he were the one sat in that chair having this conversation with me. 

“It’s still a risk.” I think of a way around having to agree to anything before I have to.”Betraying him is fine, it’s the repercussions of doing such that would come with it if it went wrong in any way. It’ll also be my neck on the line if he ever found out it was me that ruined everything he’s built up. I’ll be the one he wants to kill.” I take an opposing stand point, I’m not going to agree to do anything until I’ve had the chance to sit down and think about it all. 

“You’ve never been scared of dying before.” He makes a very good, well executed point. “You’re scared of talking to people, you used to be scared of answering the phone, but you never been scared of dying before. That’s not something you were ever bothered by.” He looks at me with the one eye he has left (something I’m still not used to seeing) and makes me realise that I’m in over my head, in deeper than I thought I was. 

“Shut up Carl. I thought you were on my side.” I attempt to use humour as a way of defusing this a little. 

“Yeah? And you’re supposed to be on our side.”

[[[]]]

Although it hasn’t happened yet, I can feel that my do or die time is coming up sometime soon, a lot sooner than I originally thought it would. I’ve never been any good at making decisions when it comes to small matters, make decisions on a scale like this is the kind of thing that makes me want to curl up into a ball and die. I either end up making the wrong decision or I take so long making them that it’s then too late anyway. When someone else is making the decision for me, I don’t really care what happens, but when it’s me, I simply can’t handle the pressure of it all. The overly heated conversation I had with Carl made me realise that I’m going to have to decide whether I want to come clean or if I’m going to keep going how I am - keep seeing him and lying to everyone about it by telling them that I’m not screwing around with him. Come to think of it, there is a third option. I could actually stop seeing him. As appealing as it sounds, it’s still very much an option. Just because something isn’t the most favourable option available to you, doesn’t mean it’s the most logical one. 

Each of the different ways I could take this all have multiple different outcomes, none of them being certain on which way it will go either. They could go extremely well or they could be the end of me. The way I see it, it’s more of a gamble than making an educated decision like I’m making it out to be. I don’t like gambling because it brings a constant state of uncertainty until the event has passed and that’s the reason why I hate making decisions. I want things to happen as they should be happening without me being the one to interfere with the ways of the world. If it turns out to be the wrong decision, it can make you feel like it’s all your fault when really it was because of things way outside of your control. This probably comes from me overthinking it, but (as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now) overthinking is something I’ve become very good at. I’ve had more than my fair share of practice. 

I sit on my bed, literally mid mapping all the different routes available to me. I’m then branching off all the different ways each of them could span out. At the moment, I’m starting to think this isn’t going to help make any more sense than it would have done without it. 

My handwriting is a mess, my thought process is a mess and generally this whole hiccup is one giant terrible mess. 

I look down at the notebook resting across the top of my lap. My mindmap is facing up towards me. I’ve tried so many times already this evening to understand the scribbles I’ve made all over the page. So far, it’s not going me very far at all. 

My next best idea: cross of the ideas on the paper one-by-one, starting with the worst idea and leaving me with the final one being the best idea, didn’t work either. I thought that using the process of elimination wasn’t a half bad idea, but now I’m at the point of sitting here looking at the last thing left that’s not been crossed off, I can see that it was actually a rather shit idea. 

According to my piece of paper, I should tell all my friends and family the truth, but I already know that’s something I’ll never be able to go through with. No matter how much I want to, no matter how much I try, I physically won’t be able to say it. My breathing will get all jagged, my heart rate will quicken, I’ll start sweating, my hands will start to shake by my sides, my arms will become numb, my legs will become numb and I won’t be able to speak at all. Imagine your brain telling your body to do something and then having your body fight back against the orders it’s been given. 

It’s horrible. Ever so truly horrible. If it’s not something you’ve ever personally experienced, then it’s not something that’s easy to imagine. However, on the plus side, if you haven’t experienced anything like my description above, then you most definitely should consider yourself lucky. Although it’s worth a mention that I really do feel for everyone that knows exactly what I’m talking about, I know how you feel and I’m sorry you have to put up with something that people will never even try to understand. This is also the thing that pairs anxiety together with crippling depression a good deal of the time. Trust me, there’s nothing that sucks more than having both of those conditions at the same time - one of them makes you care about nothing, while the other one makes you care about everything. 

The only thing that can possibly hurt a person more is heartbreak. I’ll save the boring details of my past awful relationships for another time. From personal experience, there’s nothing that’s worse than having your heartbroken. 

It’s how a person dies while they’re still breathing. 

[[[]]]


	7. || I'm an asshole in all the right ways

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Daryl is, would you?” I’ve been asking literally everyone I’ve recently come into contact with the same question. My current victim is the lovely old lady who looks after the little ones around here. I was about half way between my house and the main building in which we have all the important meetings. I’m pretty sure her name is Linda, however, I don’t know that for sure. She was walking down the street towards and I asked her anyway, despite not having much hope of her knowing. 

“Daryl Dixon, right? The one with the long hair? Squints a lot?” She stops what she’s doing to talk to me, smiling politely in the process.

“Yeah, that’s him.” I smile back, knowing she’s only aware of him because he’s Rick’s right-hand-man.

Her smile fades for a second as she actively casts her mind back to recounting the time when she saw him last.  “I saw him earlier this morning. He was walking towards the back tower as I was on my way to the allotments.” Her sweet smile resuming as soon as she’s done talking.

“That’s great, thanks. I’ll go over there now and see if I can find him.” I finish up the conversation and turn back around to walk in the opposite direction towards the lookout tower that oversees the back area of Alexandra. I should have known to check there for him. His favourite chore is to go out on runs, but since he’s been having to keep a low profile recently it’s something Rick has told him to stop  for a while and this has become his new favourite thing to do in order to keep pulling his weight around here. Aside from running straight back into The Sanctuary and getting himself killed that way, going out on a run would be the second best way of being murdered. Although, saying that, he’s most certainly crazy enough to risk it. He stopping giving a shit about dying when Negan killed his wife. He used to keep a lid on his antics for her sake, so she wouldn’t have to lose him, but as soon as she died, he stopped caring because he didn’t have anything else to lose.

I walk the short distance to the tower with my favoured softball bat tied to my hip, the metallic object hitting the side of my leg with every step I take forward. It drives me slightly screwy and it’s not out of choice that I’m not just carrying it. I’ve been asked not to carry it around because apparently people have a problem with it, even though walking around here with a gun is completely fine. I’m pretty sure people started having a problem with it as soon as a certain someone started waltzing around here wielding another piece of sporting equipment as a weapon.

I climb the ladder up to what has to be the least sturdy lookout point we have here. I push the trap door open with one good shove, climb the final little bit before closing the door behind me and brushing myself off after crawling around on the floor of the pod at the very top. There are two folding garden chairs up here, looking out onto the open land in front of them. Daryl is sitting in one of them and I settle myself down into the other one to his left hand side. It’s a smaller room than I thought it was going to be, which only means this conversation is going to be made all the more awkward than it was already going to be.

Daryl turns around in his chair to check who it is that’s come up to disturb him.

“Oh, it’s you.” He remarks, easing up as he realises he doesn’t have to deal with someone he doesn’t like. He sets his weapon back down on the floor. He must have picked it up when he heard me flicking open the latches to let myself in.

“Don’t sound too excited or anything.” I jeer, removing my bat from my side and leaning it up against the wall next to me.

“It’s nothing personal. I just like being on my own up here.” He hints that I better have a good reason for coming to find him up here. I know he’s still not done grieving, I know he gets down a lot of the time, I also know that locking himself away up here on his own isn’t going to do him any good either.

Despite him coming across fairly hostile, he shimmys his chair around to face me to make the conversation more natural. I follow suit and turn my chair in towards him, so we’re almost looking directly at each other.

“You wanna talk about it?” I make the offer, already knowing there’s a strong chance of him not taking me up on it. As cruel as it may sound, I don’t really want him to either, offering advice on sensitive issues like this isn’t really my thing. I glance over at him to catch his facial expression. It’s one of pain.

“Thanks, but no thanks. Nothing to talk about. Same shit different day. She’s gone and nothing I can do will bring her back.” He takes a drag from his cigarette, lets the smoke settle in his lungs for a little while and then blows the smoke back out of them. He offers it over to me and I take it from him. I did quit smoking just before the walkers destroyed the world and when things went from bad to total shit-stone I decided it was pointless to quit. With being eaten alive becoming the nastiest death now, I figured smoking was the least of my worries. “What did you want to ask? I’m sure you didn’t come here for a heart to heart.” He hits the nail on the head, knowing all too well my hidden agenda of being here.

“Is it really that obvious?” I ponder, picking the corners of my lips up into an almost smile, hoping it will put him in a more understanding mood when I ask him to put his neck on the chopping block for me yet again.

“Well, out with it woman. What do you need me to do this time?” He bluntly jumps the gun. Shame he’s not in a more cooperative mood, it would have made my life a lot easier.

“I need to go back to The Sanctuary and I need you to be my wingman, or my escort, whichever you like the sound of most.” I study his face, looking for any clues to how he’s feeling about this. He retains the same hard expression he usually does as I take a moment to take a puff from the cigarette. I hand it back to him and continue explaining as he continues smoking. “I can’t keep going on like this. I need to talk to Negan and you’re the only one I can trust. I can’t trust anyone else; even Tara would go grassing my up to my brother if she found out about it.” My words become rushed and my leg bounces up and down. Daryl takes his sweet time in making his mind up.

“Fine, fine. But this is the last time.” He waves the fag butt around in the air, trailing the smoke around with it, throwing it onto the floor and stamping it out with his boot. “The next time you want to do some stupid shit like this, you’re on your own.” He pulls a cigarette packet out of his pocket and lights up another one without taking a break for any air. “What do you want me to do?” He sounds miserable like he always does, it makes it hard to guage how he’s really feeling about it all.

“I need you to tell Rick that I’m going to be gone for a day and a half at the most. If he asks why I’m going, just tell him you don’t know because I never told you. If he asks why I told you and I never told him, say it’s because I know he would have put me on house arrest to stop me from going.” I cover all bases of the things I think Rick would speculate on. I like to think I know him well enough by now.

“I mean it when I say I’m not doing this again. I don’t want to be that dick that lies to everyone’s face.” He continues to suck the smoke out of the cigarette. “Besides, you’re being stupid. I don’t want to be a part of anyone’s domestic fucking argument. That’s your shit to work out.” Daryl puts me out of my misery in trying to figure out his thoughts on this by setting me out straight.

At this point I’m not sure whether I want to hug him for going through with this for me or whether I want to kick him in the shins for running his mouth like that. I thought we were closer than that.

“I don’t expect you to do anything you don’t want to.” I tell him, I don’t want him to be pressured into anything. I want him to help me because he wants to. I don’t agree with it, it’s not something anyone should have to do. Not the way children are pressured in schools, not the way teenagers are pressured into changing their appearance because everyone makes them feel like they should, not any way.

“You’re already asking people to do things they don’t want to do.” Daryl continues with the brutally honest approach of dealing with things. “Tara, Me, Carl. None of us  _ want _ to lie, we do it because we love you. It’s all about give and take.” Daryl complains, throwing me off course with his tough love speech. Knowing it and having people actually admit to it are two very different things. My friends and family show me they love me in the little things they do; Daryl does it by complaining about how stupid and inconvenient I’m being and yet still going ahead and helping me with it anyway. It means even more that he loves me because he chooses to, not in a forced way because we were family before all of this.

“I know.” I admit. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But it’s not worth worrying about that anymore because by this time next week I’ll have this whole thing sorted out one way or another.” I tell both of us, mentally promising that I mean it this time.

**[[[]]]**

While it’s not the most ideal of plans, the only way Daryl would agree to help me out in any way was by doing everything by his terms. He told Rick we were going out on a scouting mission of The Sanctuary. I know the loose plans Rick has for tearing that place apart from the inside out and telling him we were going to scope the structure of the building from the outside made perfect sense. The challenging part was cooking up a plausible reason as to why I was going as well. In the end it came down to me telling lots of things he already knew that he couldn’t argue with. 1) I’m an adult and can make my own decisions. 2) He knows I like going out and don’t like spending too much time inside our walls. 3) He couldn’t actually stop me without causing a serious shit storm with the people of Alexandria questioning the morals of their leader. Upon the three of us having our little meeting, Daryl explained his reason for making me let him come with me. He said he would be more comfortable lying to Rick if he didn’t have to spend the next couple of days around him here, in Alexandria, while waiting to see if I would come back alive. Although I originally had an issue with it, because I thought he was doing this for no other reason than he thought I wouldn’t be able to get myself there and back alive a second time, once I processed it for a while, i realised that I probably would have done exactly the same thing if I would have been him. My only issue is that it makes me slightly uncomfortable knowing that he’s putting himself in harm’s way because of me. If this trek is the thing that finally puts the Dixon in his grave, I don’t think that’s something I’ll ever be able to get over.

“So, remind me again, why are we doing this?” Daryl inquires as we trundle through the never-ending forest which covers most of the distance between here and our destination. The autumnal colours of brown, orange and yellow leaves scatter the ground, making a satisfying sound with the crunch they make as we walk over them. This is my favourite time of the year, bar none.

“We’re,  _ plural _ , are doing this because you were very adamant that you came along. I, as in  _ singular _ , am doing this because upon instruction from Carl, I either need to end the whole sleeping with Negan thing or come clean with everyone. I’m opting for the latter option. I’m going to tell Negan I’m telling the entire population of Alexandria that I’m sleeping with him and then I’m going to tell my brother I’m sleeping with the one human he wants to drop dead more than anyone else on the face of this planet.” I justify, looking over at him. I examine him carrying a rucksack on his back and an assault rifle on a black strap thrown over his shoulder. 

“There’s only so many times you can make this trip without getting yourself killed.” Even more of the truth comes out, it sounds like he was coming along because he wants to act as my protector. Maybe, more of a babysitter, not that it really matters either way.

“We’ll be there soon and we haven’t seen even one walker yet.” I make him well aware that we’ve not had any bother at all, nothing to even hint that this was a really bad idea.

“That’s not the point, Al, and you know it.” He protests, giving Judith competition for the accolade of ‘baby of the group’. “You shouldn’t be putting  up with walking all that way and back again for the prick anyway.” He insults Negan with good reason, looking to me to see if he’s hurt me. He hasn’t. Like I said before I can’t care about him. Not to mention that every reason is a good one to insult Negan at this point.

Within a couple of minutes, me and Daryl are within sight of the compound the Saviours call home; I’m reluctant to call it The Sanctuary with all the low-lifes and scumbags that live in there. The pair of us come to a natural stopping point just before the treeline, silently agreeing that it’s not safe for Daryl to get any closer. I know he wants to go in there and kill the big guy himself and I also know the only reason he’s not going to do that right now because he’d get killed as well. I’m sure it also obvious to him that he stands a much better chance of killing him when he’s not attempting to do so on his own.

“What exactly are you going to do when I’m in there?” I ask, taking my softball bat off of my hip to grip tightly in my hand, it’s going to be between here and the entrance I stand the most chance of having to kill a walker considering they’re strung up around the entire perimeter of this place. I wouldn’t mind getting to using it on a couple of Negan’s goons on the inside either.

“Exactly what I told Rick I was going to do. Would look a little suspicious if we came all the way here and didn’t examine the outside of the place, don’t you think?” Daryl treats me as if I have the IQ level of a potato.

“Whatever,” I shoot back, pissed at him for being such an ass. “Just don’t go getting yourself killed.” I announce, stepping away and leaving him behind to continue on my way forward.

“That’s why I bought you along.” Daryl teases me, keeping up this jousting of sarcasm, “if anyone can talk that bastard out of killing me it’s going to be you.”

I half consider stopping to stand there and argue with him, but there’s really no point. He won’t be told. He would either come up with ample reasons why I’m being such a half whit or he would refuse to listen to anything I had to say.

**[[[]]]**

“Oh come on Simon, don’t be a dick.” I learnt that was his name the last time I was here, anyone with a functioning brain would  be able to work out that he’s someone with a lot of authority around here. He’s the same asshole who dealt with the palava I caused turning  up here unannounced with the previous visit I made. Negan must have told him about me, he told the others to lower their arms and he escorted me though to Negan himself, probably checking that I didn’t kill anyone on my way through to their leader.

It makes it sound like a bit of a cult, but come to think about it, a cult isn’t far at all from the truth of how they run things as a community. Last time he walked me straight through to Negan. This time he deciding to be difficult and not let me go any further than the informal office thing that you have to walk through before getting to Negan’s room. Put simply, it’s a waiting room.

I know he’s in the next room. Whether Simon knows it or not, I already know he’s in there with a woman other than me. I’m not stupid and I’m not so full of myself to think I’m special enough for him to not shag other people.

“He’s having a meeting. I can’t let you go in there and pass on anything that’s said back to your buddies back home.” Simon whips up some bullshit excuse as to why he’s not letting me go in there. If it was a meeting I would hear voices, but I hear nothing. I also know it’s bull because meetings are generally held in meeting rooms, not in a bedroom.

“That’s complete shit and you know it. If it was a meeting about ruining Alexandria, you would be in there with him.” I think of a third reason why it’s easy to see straight through him and use that one as my opening punch. “Also, I’ve been in there before, there’s nowhere near enough space in there to have a damn meeting.” I bring up the next best argument I have, knowing he’s going to have to be honest with me now because his only other option is nothing short of pulling off a miracle.

I’ve been cheated on before and while I don’t consider this cheating at all because I’m not in an kind of exclusive relationship with anyone, I know by the way someone is acting that Simon is being too cagey for him not to be in there with someone.

I spare him the pain of having to wreck his brain for a new excuse (which pains me because he doesn’t deserve me making his life easier in any way at all). I jump in with the adrenaline now overtaking now anxious I am, sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a real shame it doesn’t happen all the time. “I know there’s a woman in there with him. I’m not stupid.”

I watch his facial expression change from one of stress to slightly less stressed, at least he doesn’t look so constipated. “And that doesn’t bother you?” The overly inquisitive tone of his voice gives away that he’s astonished by my revelation. He acts like he gives a shit about me when it’s just another lie. He has no reason to care about me, so why should he?

I shake my head, no. I stand my ground on this one. For once in my life I don’t want to bottle it, I don’t want to run away like I always do.

“Most girls get all crazy when there’s other bitches involved.” He chuckles to himself, clearing finding something funny that he shouldn’t.

I shoot him a disapproving look for referring to the entire female population as ‘bitches’. It’s the same as me calling all men bastard scumbags, which I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t appreciate being included in that demographic because one man, one time, decided to be a douche.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” Simon holds his hands up in fake surrender. “Are you waiting till he’s done or are you going to come back some other time?” Simon presses for an answer, taking his hands out of the air and putting them back at his sides. He couldn’t make it more obvious that he’s only trying to get rid of me even if he wanted to.

I already worked out there were other women, but having to come here and physically face up to it is proving to be harder than I wanted it to be. I don’t want these feelings, I don’t want to feel anything other than an overwhelming need to slit the man’s throat while he’s sleeping.

“I’m just going to go in there.” I tell him, standing up and unsuccessfully making my way to the doorway before Simon jumps into action to stand in front of it, wedging himself between the door and myself.

“Uuh, no, you’re not.” Simon laugh again. I smile at the way he’s having to restrain himself from lashing out at me because Negan likes me, he knows Negan would make his life more difficult than it needs to be if he went doing something to upset me.   

“If you don’t let me in there, it going to make it more tempting than it already is to kick you in the balls. Now, you either get out of my way or you’re going to have a really fun time explaining to Negan why you had to throw me into a holding cell because that’s the only other way this is going to play out.” I offer him the clean cut choice between scenario A and scenario B, wondering which one he is going to opt for. If he has a single ounce of sense floating around anywhere in that brain of his.

He reaches down to his belt and pulls a gun from it. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to threaten someone with a goddamn gun. Instead of pointing the end of the barrel at me, he turns the gun around in his hand and holds the handle towards me. “At least take my piece so it looks like I couldn’t have stopped you even if I tried.” He explains upon registering the overly confused expression evidently displayed upon my face. He shakes the grip at me in a bid to get me to hurry up in taking it from him.

“Uhh, thanks…” I comment, feeling pretty convinced this is going to come back around to bite me in the ass at some point in the future. These things always do. Simon doesn’t have a selfless bone in his body, which only leads me to believe that he’s done this for all kinds of untold ulterior motives. He’ll want repaying for this. Mind you, that’s something for me to worry about some other time, because at the moment I’m rapidly running out of time. The longer I’m in here, the higher the risk is of Daryl storming in here to come and get me, getting himself slaughtered in the process.

I shake brain clear of thoughts as I push through the main door into the next room, where bursting in causing much more of a scene that I was expecting it to.I knew there was going to be a woman in here with him, but as soon as I entered the room it rapidly dawns on me how unprepared all three of us were for such a dramatic turn of events. The woman with Negan’s dick half way down her throat looks as if she couldn’t believe that her day managed to get even worse than it was before I stormed in; Negan looks as if he’s been caught sticking his hands to steal out of the cookie jar; myself, well that’s a whole different ball game. Negan didn’t look like he was enjoying himself in even the slightest way and that’s really not some I’m going to be able to get my head around in a hurry. He enjoys himself with me and that’s a major complication I don’t want to have to fry my little brain about. If he’s got said feelings for me, I’m going to have to sit down and have a serious think about it and that’s really not my strongest skill.

As if forgetting that I’ve seen everything there is to see of his body, he jumps up to cover himself, shooting out of his seat and returning himself to a decent state of dress. He runs over to me and comes very close to tripping over his pants as he does so. He pushes his lady friend out of the way as he stuffs himself back into his boxers. The woman, whoever she is, gets up off her knees, sits herself on the jet black leather sofa and waits there as if she needs someone to dismiss her before she’s allowed to leave the room.

“Alexus? Shit. I- I- I can- What are you doing here?” The most confident man I’ve ever come across in my entire 30 years of living has been reduced to a stuttering example of a human. Our roles have been reversed with him taking my place as the blathering mess and me taking his position of the one taking the lead. It’s rather satisfying watching him not being able to tell his ass from his elbow.

_ Yeah, that’s because it means he cares like he says he does. You know you want him to. _

He comes to stand directly besides me, now not sure what he should do now that he’s so close to me. I’m very close to being convinced that he’s got a parasite eating away at his brain with the way he’s been acting. Either that, or he forgot to shoot up on his daily dose of crack this morning with his breakfast - I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reality of why he acts the way he does all the time. If anything, it would make a lot of sense.

“Well, I needed to speak to you, so, coming down here was the only way to do that.” I clarify, thinking that it would have been fairly obvious why I would be here to see him in the middle of the day like this. I can’t think of any other reason why I would do such. “But it appears that I’ve caught you at a bad time. I guess I should come back some other time when you’re not so… preoccupied.” I bluff. There’s no chance of me leaving here now after dragging both myself and Daryl all this way out here, even if it was Daryl who made me bring him along.

I turn to leave, but Negan stops me from making it any further than getting one foot out of the door by grabbing ahold of my upper arm, just like I hoped he would. I force away the smile that’s threatening to get the better of me as I look down at my feet, away from him so he’s unable to see how much I’m enjoying seeing him like this.  

“Don’t.” He cautions, an underlying warning now clutching onto his words. “You know neither of us want you to do that.” I’m still looking out of the door, away from him, and I don’t need to be looking at him to feel his captivating eyes burning holes into the back of my skull.

“I was never going to leave,” I admit, “we’ve got a hell of a lot more to talk about now anyway.” I swiftly swivel back around to face him. I make my way back into the room, my eyes instantly landing on the girl who’s still sat on the couch.

“What are you still doing here?” Negan grimaces as he notices her still in here with us upon facing back into the room and noticing her there. The face he pulls mimics one of physical pain in realising that he’s dropped a bollock here. He thinks I’m stupid enough to think that I was the only one he was interested in and that much really is laughable. Even with whatever feelings I do (or don’t have for him), we never agreed on any sort of exclusive relationship with each other so it’s not like I could be justified in being mad with him even if I wanted to. It wouldn’t be my place. We’ve obviously got some crossed wires here if he thinks there reason here for me to be mad at him.

“Don’t get mad at her.” I solemnly scold him, not meaning to sound too harsh. It would give the impression than I am indeed angry at him and that’s not the way I’m going to play this. I’m not keen on causing more drama than there needs to be. She flashes a ‘thank you’ smile at me on her way past, which, of course, pisses Negan off like most things do. Her exit leaves me and Negan in a position of being alone together.

“You’re not even supposed to be here.” He snarls, snapping at me out of being hacked off with himself and having nobody else to lash out at as a scapegoat.

“If you don’t like it then you shouldn’t have told me to drop in whenever I want and then have a piss fit when I do turn up.” I assert with a boost of randomly kindled confidence from a source that I can’t locate. I slump down onto the foot of his bed, sitting myself down right on the edge of it.

Negan grabs one of his sofas and turns it around on it’s axis so that he’s facing me when he sits down on it. He positions himself dead in the centre, putting his body in line with mine. He has to look up to meet my gaze. I’m never the tallest person in any room that I’m in, so this is certainly new to me.

“You’re not upset.” Negan comments, telling me something I was already well aware of. I can’t work out whether I want to be upset about this or not. I have my reasons for both, neither of which I particularly want to mull over at this given moment.

“Why? Did you want me to be upset by the fact that my fuck buddy screws other people? The whole point in that whole dynamic is so that you don’t have to worry about all that commitment shit.” I alter the way this is considered. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember ever taking any vows in front of my friends and family.”I add.

“Yeah? Well, you know what? Maybe I do want you to be pissed off. And do you know why? Because I’m not lying about how I feel about you. When I say something, I mean it. I don’t what assholes you’ve been with before, but I’m an asshole in all the right ways, not the kind to tell you they want you if they don’t mean it.” He insists, leaning forward so that his wrists come to meet his knees. He speaks steadily and well collected in a nature that hardly ever makes an appearance when he’s talking. “I want you to feel the same as I do.”

He stuns me with his apparent out right honesty. It’s not like he’s not brutally honest the rest of the time, this just feels different somehow. He’s not joking about it, he’s not laughing it off either. He’s remaining perfectly cool, taking extra care to make sure that I understand everything he’s saying.

“I can’t trust you, Negan.” I take the honest approach alone side him, I might as well seeing as it looks like it’s honest hour. I feel my hands start to tremble slightly and my heart rate begins to steadily rise one beat at a time.

“Can’t trust me?” He scoff in disbelief and I’m more bewildered that he finds my statement so hard to comprehend. He murders people for the fun of it, yet has difficulty seeing why people are weary of him. “Since when have I  _ ever  _ not kept my word? I’ve never let you down.” His voice flips over to being a stern, angry one. He stands, putting himself above me once again. He peels his jacket off his torso and slings it onto the bed behind me, leaving him in the single layer of his grubby white t-shirt. He paces around the room, trying to figure out what he’s done wrong as he runs his fingers through his slick, deeply dark hair.

“You’re the enemy. I’m your enemy whether you realise it or not. How am I supposed to know that you’re not sleeping with me because you’re playing some seriously twisted head games with me? It would make sense for that to be the case. It would tear my family apart from the inside out and that way you win the war.” I lash out, reaching the point where I’m unable to keep a lid on my concerns any longer.

He looks back at me, raising his eyes from the floor in order to do so. He walks over from standing about 6 feet away from to going to crash back down onto the sofa in exactly the same place that he was seated before. He looks perplexed. He holds his head in his hands, stressing about how he’s going to tackle this, I should imagine. He looks back up at me again and addresses me in a much softer demeanour than before.

“Of all the things I’ve done, of all the things I  _ would  _ do, that isn’t one of them. I hoped that you, off all people, would finally understand me. If anyone would give me a chance, I wanted it to be you.” He remains calmer than he should. I see him having to physically restrain himself from lashing out, to stop himself from losing his temper like he so desperately wants to.

I hope he means all of this because he’s breaking my heart. I don’t want to feel like the fucking idiot of the century when I find out this was all a con. However, on the flip side, I don’t want to feel bad for accusing him of such things if it turns out that he’s being true to his word and is being a decent human being for once.

I stare into his eyes, in the foolish hope that I’ll be able to find some truth in them. It doesn’t help out all that much at all.His eyes look the same as they always have done. Lying or telling the truth, he’s keeping his gaze the same as it ever was, not giving anything away.

Dead silence sits between us as we both wait for me to come up with something worth saying. I drown in my own doubts and second guesses. I came in here with the clear vision of what I was going to do and now that things aren’t how I thought they would be, it’s thrown me completely off the trail. It all becomes so much that I almost start crying, but Negan brings me back to my senses. Working out for himself that I don’t know what to say.

“Alexus, my dear…” He pauses, thinking very carefully on considering his next move. He takes the plunge and takes my hand, this being yet another first for the both of us, gripping my fingers tightly together as he pushes on with the conversation that’s lingering between us. “How can you be so sure that I would hurt you like that if you don’t even give me the chance to prove that was never my intention?” He throws in a beautiful curveball of a question. He sends my head into an even bigger frenzy than it was in before and I have to push it all down as I put my feelings aside and force myself into using my logical brain to deal with this one and not my emotional one, that was the one that got me in this mess in the first place.

“Say I did that, like I actually played happy families with you, by the time we got to that stage of me trusting you, it could already be too late. Everyone would hate me, too many people would get hurt, they’d blame me for jumping ship. The collateral damage is just too much, whatever we have going on here isn’t worth the amount of people that would get killed over it. With me here, you wouldn’t care about who you killed over there and with Rick being mad at you for taking me, he’d let loose. It doesn’t take a lot to push him over the edge. I can’t risk it.”

“You should stop thinking about everyone else for a change. Be selfish, trust me, it’ll be the best decision you ever make.” He pushes his eyebrows together, expressing his thoughts using his face to exaggerate his point further.

I keep a hold of his hand for the sheer fact that I want to be able to enjoy his touch while I’m still able to; who knows if I’ll even get the opportunity to do so again.

My eyes drift south to our interlocking fingers. My heart becomes overwhelmed and I almost, very almost, back out of doing this, of walking away when it’s less painful than it would be me having to leave him 6 months down the line. I take a deep breath, soldiering on.

“What would it take for you to trust me?” He cuts straight down the middle of me take a moment to have a time out. At least his failure in not sounding desperate at this point. “Name your price and I’ll do whatever it takes to prove that you can trust me.” He rubs the back of my hand using this thumb, stroking backwards and then forwards again.

“I don’t know.” I answer, kicking myself for not being able to come up with anything better. I only answer with such because I know he would only pester me until I said something.

“How about you become my only wife? I’ll give up my other wives for you?” He puts in a suggestion that works just as well as him slapping me in the face would have done. He clearly thought it was a good idea. I’m telling you now, it doesn’t make things any better. If anything, he’s made things even worse for himself. They’re easier for me because my decision just became a whole lot clearer.

“I’m sorry. Did you just say you would leave your wife for me? As in, you mean you’re married and you didn’t think that was something worth mentioning before you jumped into bed with me?” I raise my voice and violently yank my hand away from his. He goes into a state of shock at the way I’ve reacted. I can only half blame him, I’m surprised at myself as well.  

“Wives - plural - and yeah. I’m married. They marry me and in exchange I offer them safety and luxuries they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.” Negan makes it sound like these women are being given a good deal. He can think it’s a choice they’d made all he wants, but any idiot could figure out that they’ve been forced into doing such because they were fed up living the shit lives they had before. Sounds like it was a matter of choosing between marrying a tyrant or suicide. I’m astonished that he’s merely attempting to pull this shit.

To me, it simply sounds like prostitution with more steps.

I snap.

“You know, I was foolishly starting to think you weren’t the asshole everyone thinks you are, that you weren’t as fucked up as you come across, even possibility that you had more layers to you that there might even be parts of you that are still human. But,  _ boy,  _ was I wrong. You’re just the brute everyone says you are.” I don’t shout, raising my voice has no place here because it’s not going to change a damn thing.

As I stand and walk towards the door to make an exit, Negan practically pounces on me. He constricts my wrist in an attempt to stop me from leaving him. I pull myself away from him and thank God that he has the sense to let me go.

I storm away from him, straight out the door and proceed down the elongated hallway. I stop halfway between the start and the end of the room. I stand to ponder my doubts for a fraction of a second, to mull over if I’m making a mistake here.

I jump upon hearing Negan shout “fuck it” at himself, jumping in surprise at the crashing sound that follows it. His annoyance with himself boiling over into the physical act of him breaking something in the room, the sound of objects clattering to the floor accompanies it also.

I take 4 more steps forward before stopping again as I consider going back in there rather than walking away and ending this now like I know I need to do for the best. As much as I really want it to work between us, it’s never going to happen, at least not in this life. It’s one of those things that simply can’t work without something dramatically changing to compensate for it.

No, No. I keep walking forward down the hallway. I have to do this. Like Daryl said; I’m not doing this because I want to, I’m doing this because I have to. 

**[[[]]]**


End file.
